Analyst Report

From Scripts to Platforms: The Path to Scalable Network Automation

EMA’s latest research reveals why scripts dominate network automation today and how teams can move beyond them to achieve orchestration, consistency, and self-service delivery.

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Key Report Insights

- 64% of enterprises use homegrown software or scripts to automate their networks.
- Teams spend 6+ hours a week maintaining and debugging DIY tooling.
- 64% of IT leaders are actively seeking low- or no-code platforms to standardize and scale automation.
- Security, compliance, and governance are key drivers pushing orgs to adopt platforms.
- Platforms that integrate and extend existing homegrown automation — rather than rip-and-replace — are seen as the ideal solution.

The Great Divide: Why Scripts Rule the Trenches, But Platforms Hold the Future

The EMA research reveals a split perspective within organizations: network engineers favor homegrown scripts and open-source playbooks for their flexibility and control, while IT leadership sees commercial platforms as essential for consistency, security, and scalability. Scripting and open source remain the go-to solutions for immediate needs and niche use cases, but as demands for orchestration, governance, and cross-team visibility grow, leadership is pushing for modular, extensible platforms that can integrate – not replace – what teams have already built. This tension reflects a deeper truth: the future of network automation is not about choosing between DIY and commercial platforms – it’s about bridging them.

This tension between daily engineering needs and broader leadership goals shapes how automation evolves across the enterprise.

Practitioner Reality

61% of network teams taking a DIY approach to automation spend six or more hours each week maintaining and debugging these tools.

IT Leadership View

64% of IT organizations are seeking low- or no-code network automation solutions to drive standardization and scale.

Why Scripts & Playbooks Remain the Default for Engineers

While engineering teams continue to rely heavily on code-heavy approaches for network automation, EMA’s research found that many IT leaders want to see another path forward. In fact, 64% of IT organizations are actively looking for low- or no-code solutions to drive standardization and scale. Yet homegrown automation efforts – by nature – remain high-code and labor-intensive, requiring constant development and refinement as needs evolve.

Struggle to sell IT leadership on commercial tools.

Value scripts for flexibility and customization.

See commercial tools as too centralized and rigid.

Believe open source & free tools are trusted industry standards.

When Scripts Start to Strain: The Limits of DIY Automation

While homegrown scripts and tools help network teams tackle immediate challenges, they’re not without serious hurdles. The EMA report reveals that even engineers deeply committed to scripting acknowledge the growing pains: from skill gaps and tool complexity to maintenance headaches and security risks. As networks scale, these challenges threaten to slow progress and erode the very flexibility that makes homegrown solutions attractive in the first place.

The Human Capital Gap

Building and managing code-heavy automation requires engineers with a rare blend of network and development skills – talent that’s hard to find and retain.

It’s one thing if I write an awesome script, I share it with my team, and they just hit run. But it’s another thing entirely if I can share that script with them, we can collaborate, and use that code to solve other problems. That’s way more valuable and impactful to the organization.

Network Engineer

Large multi-national pharmaceutical company

Tool & Project Complexity

DIY tools grow messy over time. Poor documentation, inconsistent processes, and ad-hoc fixes make it harder to sustain progress.

Sooner or later, these tools turn into this Frankenstein’s monster. Before you know it, you’ve got 15 Frankensteins running around with a lot of overlap and a lot of distinctness. It’s kind of a hassle to build functions and make sure you can recreate them in different environments.

Network Automation Engineer

Midwest Renewable Energy Company

Maintenance & Security Risks

Supporting and securing homegrown automation is an uphill battle, especially as original builders move on or documentation gets lost.

We have two big drivers for automation: security and speed. Security is number one. We need to make sure things are done the same way every time, with the right controls and approvals built in.

Network Engineering Leader

Global Financial Services Company

Usability Issues & Fragile Toolchains

Most homegrown solutions rely on scripts strung together manually, which break easily when used in unintended ways.

Unexpected Use Cases

Tools built for one job often get pressed into others, and that mismatch leads to failures and confusion.

The Power of Platforms:
Turning Scripts Into Scalable Operations

While homegrown scripts and playbooks offer control and flexibility, the EMA research shows that platforms play a critical role in taking automation to the next level. By centralizing governance, providing security, and enabling integration, platforms help teams transform one-off scripts into coordinated, scalable workflows that work across the enterprise.

The key isn’t to abandon homegrown tools – it’s to bring them together in a way that makes them more secure, reliable, and sustainable.

Many network automation engineers want to bring their homegrown tools to vendor platforms and that security, compliance, and platform requirements, like stability and scalability, are the biggest factors.

Which of the following are the most compelling reasons to adopt commercial network automation solutions, as opposed to DIY network automation?

I would like a platform to onboard my scripts, stitch them together, and wrap them in a nice package. I don’t have to tell people to go log into a Linux server and run an Ansible playbook. Instead, they get this nicely named workflow with a nice GUI, and you’ll see little boxes turn green as it progresses through the steps.

Senior Network Engineer

Midsized U.S. Financial Technology Company

How Platforms Operationalize Home Grown Automation

I want extensibility without proprietary vendor nonsense. Whatever integrations they give me out of the box, I should be able to create my own and I should be able to stitch them together through a standard language, like Python. I should not have to learn a proprietary vendor language or system. This makes it intuitive to anyone else who knows Python. If I get hit by a bus, my organization won’t have much trouble hiring someone who can take over and continue running it.

Senior Network Engineer

Midsized U.S. Financial Technology Company

Armstrong Level’s Up Python-Centric Automation with Itential Platform

The EMA report features Armstrong’s journey as they scaled from Python scripts to orchestrated, self-service network services. By using Itential, Armstrong didn’t have to abandon their existing work — they brought their scripts into a secure, modular environment and grew them into coordinated workflows that could be exposed through self-service APIs. The result? Significant time savings, faster delivery of network services, and a more strategic approach to infrastructure automation.

Read the Full Story

We didn’t want to rip out everything we built. Itential gave us a way to bring it all together, make it secure, and deliver it as a product.

Eric Anderson

Senior Infrastructure Architect, Armstrong World Industries

From Scripts to Services: Operationalizing Network Automation at Scale with Itential

Itential delivers a modular automation and orchestration platform that helps network and infrastructure teams evolve from homegrown scripts and fragmented tooling to secure, scalable, and integrated automation. Instead of requiring teams to replace what they’ve already built, Itential enhances it, providing the automation execution, orchestration and self-service capabilities needed to mature network automation into a strategic capability.

Operationalize Your Automation: Execute with Control

Orchestrate for Scale: Connect and Standardize Workflows

Deliver Network Services as Products: Enable Self-Service

From Automation Projects to Scalable Operations

Explore the Itential Platform

Read the Full EMA Research Report

Download EMA’s research report to dig into why scripts still dominate network automation, the limits of DIY tooling, and how platforms can integrate and extend existing homegrown work — turning one-off scripts into scalable, governed services.

Download the EMA Report