Case Study

How Lumen Built Operational Confidence at Global Scale with Itential

With Itential as the orchestration backbone, Lumen turned automation from a tool rollout into a governed operating model – taking the 2 a.m. work off human hands and laying the foundation for AI-safe autonomy.

Challenge

A heterogeneous network built across decades of acquisitions – fragmented scripts, slow human-gated change pathways, and engineers stuck firefighting instead of engineering.

Solution

Itential as the governed orchestration backbone – connecting east-west systems within hours, baking pre/post-checks into every workflow, and meeting engineers in ServiceNow.

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Impact

Millions of orchestrated actions a year, customer-impacting incidents down 21%, less than 2 minutes of platform downtime YTD, and a path to 80% machine-to-machine operations.

The Challenge

Scaling Automation Across One of the World’s Largest Networks

Lumen operates one of the most interconnected networks on the planet – a global backbone that can’t afford downtime or delay. But as the network grew through decades of mergers and modernization, operations became fragmented, scripts multiplied, and change controls slowed everything down. Engineers spent more time firefighting than engineering. The turning point came when Lumen leadership made automation not a side project, but a skills mandate and a cultural reset – and recognized that achieving service agility at this scale required an orchestration layer capable of turning automation into a governed, measurable operating model.

Four Challenges That Mattered

Lumen’s mission was clear: automate the mundane and take the 2 a.m. work off human hands. Four structural gaps stood in the way.

Scale & Heterogeneity

Reconcile legacy and modern networks and east-west systems – activation, inventory, change portals, assurance – into callable, governed services.

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Culture, Not Just Tools

Convert skeptics into contributors. Make automation a skills pivot, not extra credit. Show progress in working software, not decks.

Speed With Safety

Ship automations quickly without creating new failure modes – making pre/post-checks and rollback non-negotiable.

Adoption Where People Already Work

Publish automations into frontline systems like ServiceNow instead of forcing a new console.

Lumen’s leaders reframed automation as an operating model, not a tooling project – a governed orchestration layer strong enough to handle production networks, cross-domain workflows, and eventually machine-to-machine operations.

Why Itential

Why They Chose Itential

Itential became the orchestration backbone for Lumen’s transformation. The decision came down to three differentiators that set Itential apart – and shaped a partnership built for production networks, cross-domain workflows, and machine-to-machine operations to come.

The Orchestration Backbone for a Governed Operating Model

After early proof-of-concept work demonstrated rapid integration across diverse systems, Lumen scaled Itential as the action engine beneath an automation-first program. Five principles shaped what came next.

Explore the Platform

Integration Speed

Itential connected and orchestrated across legacy and modern systems within hours – proving agility at enterprise scale and establishing credibility that the platform could evolve as fast as Lumen’s network.

Governance as a Design Principle

Every workflow runs through model-driven guardrails with pre- and post-checks, rollback paths, and AAA permissions – ensuring every change is verifiable, reversible, and compliant.

Extensibility

Low-code and high-code options let network engineers and developers contribute equally, creating a cultural bridge between operations and software engineering and accelerating delivery velocity across teams.

Atomic Actions, Composed Upward

Common diagnostics decomposed into reusable atomic actions – ping, trace, interface check – composed upward into complex runbooks. These atoms now power thousands of orchestrations safely and consistently.

Meeting Users Where They Already Work

Lumen surfaced orchestrations through ServiceNow for request, approval, execution, and audit instead of building yet another portal – shortening publishing cycles, improving adoption, and eliminating shadow tools.

The Solution

From Scattered Scripts to a Governed Orchestration Platform

With Itential as the orchestration backbone, Lumen re-platformed network operations around a governed orchestration layer – transforming how change is designed, executed, and measured across every network domain.

Establishing a Governed Framework

Process Design Documents and Solution Design Documents became mandatory before code was written. This discipline reduced rework, standardized delivery, and made reliability a built-in outcome – not an afterthought.

Breaking Work into Atomic Actions

Teams decomposed common diagnostics into reusable functions composed upward into complex runbooks. These atoms now power thousands of orchestrations safely and consistently.

Meeting Users Where They Already Work

Instead of creating a new portal, Lumen surfaced orchestrations through ServiceNow for request, approval, execution, and audit – shortening publishing cycles, improving adoption, and eliminating shadow tools.

Measuring Impact at Every Level

Every workflow is tracked for count, execution volume, success rate, and business impact – visualized in Splunk dashboards that show both OpEx avoided and new value created.

Itential provided the orchestration backbone – governance, velocity, and scale – to make safe autonomy practical at enterprise level.

Greg Freeman

Vice President Network & Customer Transformation, Lumen

The Outcome

Transformation by the Numbers

Lumen’s automation and orchestration program has delivered measurable results across reliability, efficiency, and customer experience – proving that disciplined orchestration drives both operational and business value.

350+

Workflows in Production

Workflows in production, with 700+ more identified as candidates for autonomous execution once confidence criteria are met.

99.9%

Reduction in Actionable Alerts

Over 1 billion raw network alerts reduced to ~57,000 actionable events through the Itential and Selector orchestration and AI program.

<2 Min

Platform Downtime YTD

Year-to-date downtime for the Service Assurance Itential instance – even through data-center failovers.

21%

Customer-Impacting Incidents

Reduction in construction-related customer-impacting incidents through proactive monitoring tools running on Itential.

1M+

Actions Orchestrated Annually

Workflows run safely across IP, optical, and service assurance domains — every action governed by pre- and post-checks, rollback paths, and AAA permissions.

Translating Automation into Enterprise Value

What began as a technical modernization became an enterprise-wide operating model that links automation activity to measurable business performance – with a clear north star of 80% machine-to-machine operations by 2025.