Networks are a critical part of any business, and ensuring that they operate at peak performance is essential for success. Network automation through the use of AI has emerged as one of the most effective ways to address the growing complexity of networks while also improving their resilience and reliability. In this article, we’ll explore why network automation matters and how it can be applied successfully in today’s always-on world.
What is Network Automation?
A new approach to network assurance. It is typically described as “the practice of using software tools and processes to automate the manual tasks required for effective network management”.
The essence of Network Automation is to enable NetOps teams to focus on items that require human intervention instead of managing day-to-day activities. Network automation is a solution for IT teams that need to manage complex cloud environments with servers and users in different locations.
Why Automate Networks?
The benefits are clear: it reduces risk, improves efficiency, and increases productivity while reducing operational costs. It’s a win-win for the business and its IT team.
However, it’s important to understand how NA can solve problems in your organization.
What Problems Does Network Automation Solve?
Network automation is a new approach to network assurance that aims to solve a number of problems in the current model.
The first problem it addresses is the lack of an accurate, complete picture of a network’s health and performance. Due to the fact that most networks are designed with an emphasis on throughput and speed, there’s little time or capacity for monitoring or analysis. This can lead to issues going undetected for long periods of time, which can cause large-scale outages and significant damage to both businesses and their customers. Many time after Blue Chip studies a network we actually find that there is an excess of WAN expenses not even being used. The internal networks are the problem and the costly external data is excessive.
Another problem addressed by network automation is the difficulty in automating predictable processes. Current systems rely heavily on human intervention and oversight, which makes it difficult to scale effectively or cost-effectively. Automation allows you to scale much more easily by using software instead of people (and thus eliminating those high costs).
Finally, network automation helps address the issue of security vulnerabilities in networks by allowing you to monitor your entire infrastructure in real time without having to open external access to monitoring that are potential targets for malicious actors looking for an easy way into your systems.
It is used by many companies, but it’s most commonly provided by third-party providers like Blue Chip Computer Systems, a Los Angeles IT Consultancy company. We offer network automation with the benefit of improved secure network access with continuous network analytics that will reduce costs.
What is Network Assurance?
Network assurance is the process of monitoring and managing the security, performance, availability, and compliance of a network. The practice is performed by a team of networking services provider that includes an enterprise architect, project manager, administrator, and other roles who all work together to ensure that their organization’s network meets or exceeds all requirements.
A Validation of Automated Network Assurance Platform
Validation of a network assurance platform is designed to monitor the state of your network in order to identify potential problems before they affect your employees and customers.
The platform monitors four key areas: inventory, configuration, state, and topology.
Inventory – refers to the ability to keep track of all devices in your network—including routers and switches—at all times. This is important because it allows us to know if a device has been removed or disabled by mistake, which would cause us to make sure that no one’s lost access to resources or services because of it.
Configuration – refers to how the devices are configured for use within your organization or made available externally. If a switch or router isn’t configured correctly, it could cause problems for employees who rely on these resources every day.
State – refers to whether each device is functioning properly at any given moment. If a device were experiencing problems with its power supply or other hardware issues that could cause downtime within your organization’s network, we’d be able to identify those issues immediately so you can take action before too much damage is done.
Topology – refers specifically to how all these devices are connected together into one system—the way they’re connected together determines how well they’ll work together with each other when performing tasks like sending and receiving data and responding to commands.
Advantages
You can standardize and minimize manual processes, increase network resiliency and uptime, and lower your costs:
- Standardisation and minimization: Allows us to create standards for configurations and processes, which makes it easier to manage our networks in a way that makes sense. By standardising the way our networks are set up, we can also minimise their complexity and make it easier for our IT staff to manage them.
- Zero-touch provisioning is an important feature that allows you to set up and configure devices without any human intervention. This can be done by automating the installation process, or by using existing information to create templates to configure devices automatically.
Zero-touch provisioning is one of the most important benefits because it reduces costs, improves efficiency, and ensures consistency of configuration across your entire network.
- Automate intensive manual network and service assurance: Network automation is a way to automate network and service assurance. It’s used to help with repetitive tasks so the network can be continuously monitored and managed. By automating these tasks, you save time and money. You can also have more control over your network because you’re able to make changes quickly and easily.
- Lower Costs: Network automation can help you reduce your costs. This is because it reduces the need for human labor and allows you to focus on more complex tasks. Additionally, network automation helps improve efficiency, which means you can reduce the number of employees that are needed to do the same amount of work.
- Increased Network Resiliency: Network automation can help increase the resiliency of your network by providing a way to quickly detect and respond to threats, such as malware and intrusions. Because network automation is designed to react quickly, it can help reduce downtime and improve the overall health of your network.
- Reduction in Network Downtime: Network automation can reduce network downtime by allowing for faster and more efficient troubleshooting. If a device fails, an automated system will automatically identify the problem and address it, eliminating the need for human intervention. This can save time and reduce costs associated with human labor.
- Greater insight and network control: Automating your network infrastructure allow you to gain more insight into its workings and control over how it operates. With full automation, you can set up an entirely self-monitoring and self-healing environment, with no human intervention required.
What Are The Barriers to Network Automation?
The barriers to network automation are:
- The lack of a clear understanding of the value of network automation.
- Lack of a clear definition of what automation is and how it can be implemented.
- Lack of awareness of the benefits and challenges associated with network automation.
- Lack of the right technical skills required to implement automation solutions in their organisation’s environment.
- The lack of a viable solution that meets the needs of their organisation.
- The lack of funding for implementing automation solutions in their environment
Steps in Implementing a Successful Network Automation
Step 1: Understanding the Network Automation
Before you start implementing a successful network automation, you need to understand what it is and how it works. You have to know what you want the network automation to do and what kind of impact it will have on your business.
Step 2: Planning and Designing the Network Automation System
Once you understand what network automation is, you can start planning and designing the system. This step will involve researching different types of network automation systems and then choosing one that suits your business needs.
Step 3: Testing and Verification of Network Automation System
After you have planned and designed the system, it’s time for testing and verification. You need to test each part of the system to ensure that they work correctly with each other as well as with existing systems in place.
Step 4: Implementing and Maintaining the Network Automation System Once you have tested and verified the system, it’s time to implement it. This step will involve training your staff on how to use the new system so that they can maintain it going forward.
The Future of Network Automation
The future of network automation will be a reality in the near future.
Network automation is the process of automating tasks and processes on a computer network. A person can perform automation, or it can be done by software. Network automation is often seen as an approach to managing the complexity of information technology (IT) infrastructure by using computer software to perform tasks without human intervention.
Network automation uses various types of tools such as configuration management systems, application deployment tools, or network management systems to perform different functions such as configuration management or patching.
Network automation tools are becoming more sophisticated as new features are being added by vendors every day. Some of these features include managing multiple networks at once, updating firmware and configuration files automatically, alerting users when something goes wrong with their system, etc…
Conclusion
In conclusion, network automation offers a new approach to network assurance. It enables us to expand our ability to monitor and control our networks which makes it one of the most important tools in your arsenal when it comes to running a successful IT department. It can help you save time, money, and effort by automating tasks that would normally be done manually by human beings.
This new approach will make it possible for companies to expand their networks while simultaneously improving the quality of service they provide their customers.