The Key to Extending the Scope of Network Automation is Data Integration & Management

Traditionally, network automation has focused solely on implementation and activation of use cases instead of the full end-to-end process from planning to closure. This is due to the fact that most automation is limited by a few major challenges:

1. Lack of Reach: The inability to interact with multiple parts of the network along with all of the OSS and BSS systems severely limits how far your automations can extend.
2. Data Management: Information is stored all over the network, making it impossible to easily manage with a single source of truth.
3. Usability: Most automation platforms require engineers to learn how to code, limiting the ability to create powerful automations without having to learn a completely new skillset.

At Itential, we’ve built our platform to address these three major challenges, ensuring that organizations are able to extend the scope of automation from the very first step all the way to the last.

Reach: Increase the Value of Automation with Integration

In a recent blog post, I talked about how integration drives value – the more systems that an automation platform connects to, the more activities it can participate in as part of an automation. Each one of those connections replaces one or more manual steps that an engineer would normally need to perform by logging in to another system, collecting the appropriate data, and then using that data to perform a task.

The gating factors in most environments that prevented mass integration have been cost and complexity. Integrations typically require development, both to create and to maintain the integration code. Based on the high cost of integration, organizations had to make difficult choices, and their project timelines and budgets forced them to prioritize which systems they could afford to integrate with.

Anticipating that the future of automation would be driven by integrations, Itential designed an architecture that was both flexible and easy to integrate with. Users can utilize Pre-Built Integrations or easily build their own with Itential’s Adapter Builder. Having the ability to create integrations in minutes instead of weeks or months of development has expanded the universe of potential use cases as well as the activities than can be automated per use case, extending the scope of automation.

Manage: Federation in Network Automation

The adage is true, your automations are only as good as your data. This is why once you overcome the integration challenge, federation becomes critical. Federation creates a meta-map of the connected systems and the data associated with those systems. Instead of searching a local replica of the data, the federator knows which system is the authoritative source of truth by consulting a map. When it processes an activity that requires data from one of the connected systems, the automation platform will query that authoritative source of truth to get the information.

As part of federation, a platform like Itential aggregates and harmonizes the data, and when it makes sense, it will organize the data into categories. This enables a global view of resources and eliminates the need to do things like logging in to multiple sites or controllers to interact with the network, allowing teams to automate across more devices with better data visibility.

Simplify: Data Transformation in a Federated Model

The last historical hurdle has been how to extract information from one source, and to modify it so that it can be sent to a target such as a device. Even in relatively simple use cases, a change to a service might require information from multiple sources – such as an ordering system, an inventory system, and an IP address management system. The native structure and formats of this data will likely be very different, so an engineer would need to determine which fields would be relevant, and then which fields that data should map to – and then create a script or some other code to parse the data, restructure it, and compose the payload. This is a time consuming and complicated process.

To address this challenge, Itential utilizes a capability called data transformation. The Itential Automation Platform uses JSON as a format for representing data in the system. When information is received from a connected system, that data is stored in JSON. By using a common internal format, we can then utilize tools like JST Designer to present a no-code model where users can visually create the data mappings. Additionally, they can specify actions to manipulate the data and formatting for the target.

By utilizing Itential’s data transformation capabilities, organizations can enable any network engineer to create powerful automations without having to develop code or learn a new skillset, ensuring that the systems you’ve integrated with can speak the same language.

By overcoming all three of these challenges, organizations are finally able to extend the full scope of network automation across systems, devices, and teams to achieve true end-to-end automation. To learn more about how Itential addresses these challenges with our API first approach, watch our on-demand webinar, “Integration & Federation: The Key to the Next Wave of Network Automation.”