Leading Health Insurance Provider Sunsets Legacy HPNA, Reduces Device Backups from Hours to Minutes with Itential
INDUSTRY
Health Insurance
GOALS
- Consolidate & Modernize Network Toolset
- Mitigate Compliance Risk
- Accelerate Time to Provision New Services
- Increase Efficiency & Reliability of the Network
USE CASES
- Hybrid Cloud Configuration Management
- Day 2 Change Management
INTEGRATIONS
Key Results
Centralized configuration management across both API and CLI.
Replaced legacy HPNA and consolidated networking toolset.
Automated config backups for 2500+ devices across 6 device types.
Reduced device backups from hours to minutes.
Reduced BGP reroutes from 15 minutes to 53 seconds.
Reduced Infoblox DHCP printer reservations from 10 minutes to <10 seconds.
Escaping Tech Debt: The Need for Modern, Integrated Network Management
The leading healthcare insurance provider in North America sought to refresh their technology ecosystem after a merger left them with many disparate tools and systems for managing their network infrastructure. They aimed to simplify their toolset while ensuring maintenance of all data and avoiding any lapses in service, all while upgrading their capabilities.
One of their main priorities was replacing their legacy tool HP Network Automation (HPNA), a point solution for the configuration management of traditional network devices. HPNA was built several years ago, and it hasn’t kept up with modern networking needs. It provides only limited vendor CLI support and no API support, which prevented the company from leveraging any device type, controller, or third-party system they chose for their network. Also, any automation of configuration management with HPNA requires custom code, which greatly increases the required investment and slows down automation adoption.
With backups required for over 2,500 devices across 6+ device types and a network that is both global and mission-critical, it was key that any migration to a new solution had to be seamless: it couldn’t involve any loss of data or problematic outages. Managing configuration compliance across this complex ecosystem had become a significant use of time for network engineers as their existing toolset became less suited for the job. In sunsetting HPNA, they knew they needed a tool that could replace key backup and storage capabilities while also enabling additional comprehensive network management and integration with the rest of their ecosystem. That way they could enable orchestration by coordinating configuration management with other components of the change management process.
You can’t have a different tool for every single job. We had to eliminate the delays created by custom development work to stay ahead of device backups.
Network Engineer
Why They Chose Itential for Automated Configuration Management
The Itential Automation Platform has two key advantages over both HPNA and alternative solutions: integrations and API support which enable configuring any device type, and the ability to automate configuration changes without development expertise.
Itential is the only solution that enabled their network team to maintain all relevant data over the HPNA migration while adding the ability to manage every device across their network. This no-code integration with any tool and platform in their ecosystem makes it easy to manage configuration policies across their large, complex ecosystem of devices from multiple vendors.
It’s a streamlined approach to configuration management that enables automated validation for changes across their entire network, something that HPNA wouldn’t allow. And without the need for custom code, the team can incorporate configuration management as part of end-to-end network orchestration workflows. They can easily orchestrate configuration change processes from ticket open to ticket close without waiting for manual work.
With Itential, their network team can scale their configuration management, device backup, and storage capabilities to meet their evolving network through our:
- Seamless migration of device backup and storage capabilities from HPNA to Itential and integrity of associated data.
- Ability to extend device backup, storage, and configuration capabilities to new device types with Itential’s built-in support for different types of CLI- and API-based network devices.
- Single applicationto efficiently manage device backups, federate inventory, and automate changes to CLI-based physical devices along with API-based cloud networking services across any vendor and any OS.
- Golden Configuration trees that can be applied across a multi-vendor, multi-domain network device ecosystem.
- Compliance Plans that can generate reports across both CLI and API devices to deliver relevant insights to applications.
- The ability to build and reuse pre- and post-checks within configuration management workflows to test more rigorously in a shorter period of time without manual work.
- Automated remediationof all their devices that are out of compliance in minutes, not hours or days, mitigating config drift.
- Simplified management across a disparate technology ecosystem due to Itential’s integrate-with-anything approach and our Automation Marketplace with over 300 Pre-Built Integrations.
I think that Itential is everything we want to do that HPNA couldn’t do right out-of-the-box.
Senior Network Engineer
Reduced Backup Time From Hours to Minutes & Expanded Configuration Management Across Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
By adopting Itential, their network team was able to migrate device backup and storage capabilities away from HPNA while increasing their automation and orchestration capabilities and upholding data integrity. Itential’s ability to automate the remediation process of network devices based on hierarchical Golden Configuration trees has increased the efficiency and reliability of their network. With Itential’s robust southbound integrations for any CLI type or any API managed solution, the team was enabled to expand their configuration management capabilities across their hybrid cloud infrastructure.
With Itential’s integration focus, the network team was able to simplify their post-merger toolset and migrate all necessary network activities to a central orchestration platform, allowing for more robust configuration management capabilities that help drive their network change processes now and in the future.
Building an Automation Roadmap with Itential
This first foray into network automation and orchestration really got the ball rolling for their team – once the HPNA migration was up and running, the network team quickly implemented a BGP reroute automation use case. As their confidence grew, they were able to go faster, and now the team has expanded across dozens of other use cases for what were once repetitive daily tasks, with a dozen more on their immediate roadmap. Now, automation is central to their infrastructure strategy because, according to a senior Network Engineer, “Itential just works. It wasn’t a heavy lift and is very easy to use.”
