Case Study

How a Global Investment Banking Firm Scaled Network Automation with a High-Code + Low-Code Strategy on Itential

A small team of automation engineers and a much larger team of network engineers needed to scale firewall provisioning, compliance, and failover testing across the bank’s network – without losing speed or compliance posture. Pairing high-code assets with low-code orchestration on Itential gave them both.

Challenge

A flood of firewall policy requests, siloed scripts, and vendor-specific automation tools couldn’t scale to meet same-day SLAs.

Solution

High-code automation engineers’ scripts wrapped into low-code workflows that every network engineer can run, integrated into ServiceNow.

Why Itential

One platform that pairs script onboarding with low-code orchestration, centralizes tooling, and bakes pre/post-checks into every workflow.

The Challenge

Same-Day Firewall Delivery Couldn’t Happen with Siloed Scripts

A global investment banking firm’s network team was buried under a rising volume of firewall policy change requests – the front line of securing business-critical applications. Same-day delivery was a top priority, but the team was split between a small core of high-code automation engineers writing Python and DIY scripts, and a larger group of network engineers relying on vendor-specific controllers like Cisco DNAC, Palo Alto Panorama, and Viptela. Hand-executing scripts and manually touching sources of truth and ticketing systems put a ceiling on what the team could deliver. To break through, they needed a unified strategy that could enhance service quality, expand who could automate, bake compliance into every workflow, and shrink tool sprawl.

Where Siloed Automation Hit a Wall

Three structural gaps capped what the team could deliver as service demand kept climbing.

Hand-Executed Scripts

High-code assets existed but had to be run by hand, with manual touchpoints into ticketing and source-of-truth systems.

Vendor-Specific Tool Sprawl

Each domain – data center, firewall, SD-WAN – leaned on its own controller, with no shared orchestration layer.

icon showing multiple silhouettes, symbolizing a team

Limited Automation Participation

Only a small core of engineers could build automation, leaving most of the team unable to contribute to velocity.

We had to take a look at everything in the network and ask ourselves: who wants to automate? Who can automate? What needs to be automated? And what’s the best way to support and maximize our existing automations?

Senior Vice President, Network Engineering & Architecture

Global Investment Banking Firm

They didn’t need to choose between high-code and low-code – they needed a platform that could let both work together, expanding who could participate without losing the power of expert-built scripts.

Why Itential

Why They Chose Itential

The team needed to pair their existing high-code muscle with a low-code platform that could broaden automation participation, integrate cleanly with ServiceNow, and consolidate the tool sprawl. Itential delivered.

One Platform That Paired Expert Scripts with Team-Wide Orchestration

Itential let automation engineers onboard their high-code work as reusable assets – then layered low-code orchestration on top so every network engineer could build, run, and share end-to-end workflows.

Explore the Platform

High-Code Asset Onboarding

Existing Python, Ansible, and CLI scripts onboarded into the platform – standardized, secured, and made accessible to the whole team.

Low-Code Workflow Canvas

Drag-and-drop orchestration that lets traditional network engineers build end-to-end workflows from form-driven logic and pre-built assets.

Certified ServiceNow Application

Self-service network requests delivered directly inside the bank’s ServiceNow environment.

Pre/Post-Checks & Golden Config

Validation steps and configuration management baked into every workflow, keeping compliance intact at scale.

Single Platform, Less Sprawl

Broad orchestration and integration coverage that consolidated point automation tools and unified the architecture.

The Solution

High-Code Assets, Low-Code Orchestration, Same-Day Delivery

With Itential, the team turned firewall provisioning, compliance testing, and configuration management into shareable, governed services – all running on one platform.

Same-Day Firewall Provisioning

A workflow that ties Palo Alto Panorama and ServiceNow together, with high-code assets pushing policy changes and low-code orchestration delivering them as a service – no more overnight manual pushes.

Automated Failover Testing

Scheduled BGP checks across Cisco and Arista devices, with outputs piped into a SQL-backed network portal so engineers can compare route tables instead of running show commands manually.

ServiceNow Self-Service

The certified Itential ServiceNow Application surfaces network services as self-serve products inside the existing ITSM environment.

Icon with a key inside a shield, symbolizing security and compliance

Compliance Baked Into Every Workflow

Pre-checks, post-checks, and Golden Configuration templates standardize every change and keep regulated controls intact at scale.

We want to avoid tool sprawl as much as possible, and Itential lets us do that. When we look at turnkey automation tools, we look at three things: do they have unique capabilities Itential doesn’t have? Are they worth the price? And can we scale them and use them for multiple vendors’ products? If the answer to one of those is no, we’re probably getting rid of the tool and building its functionality in Itential.

Senior Vice President, Network Engineering & Architecture

Global Investing Banking Firm

The Outcome

Same-Day Network Services, Across More Engineers

Pairing high-code with low-code didn’t just speed up firewall delivery – it expanded who can automate, eliminated overnight manual change windows, and freed engineering capacity for higher-value work.

Mins

Firewall Service Delivery

Down from months for the most common network request.

8-10

Firewall Policy Changes Per Night

Orchestrated end-to-end through Palo Alto Panorama and ServiceNow.

1 Day

Failover Testing Time Saved

Engineers no longer spend a full day on manual show-command checks per region.

Zero

Overnight Manual Change Windows

Workflows handle after-hours pushes so engineers don’t have to.

Automation Participation Across the Team

With high-code assets wrapped in low-code workflows, automation engineers and traditional network engineers now build, run, and share orchestrated services together – and the team is moving on to event-driven automation, AI-assisted operations, and AWS VPC orchestration.

What’s Next

With same-day firewall delivery, compliance testing, and configuration management on Itential, the team is moving into event-driven automation, AI-assisted network management, expanded data center networking services, and cloud orchestration for AWS VPCs.

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