Defining Network Compliance in a Hybrid, Multi-Cloud World

In the world of IT networking, there are a few terms that are widely used but not so widely understood and the term “network compliance” is certainly one of those terms. Before we dive in head-first to define and understand it, take a quick moment to consider today’s modern network infrastructure – the network has exploded and expanded across the Internet and network teams must now contend with managing this complexity. Instead of applications being located in specific, centralized areas, both applications and users can be located anywhere and securely and seamlessly connecting the two together falls into the responsibility of network teams. When the network can traverse physical, virtual, and cloud network infrastructure, network teams need a way to standardize the configuration of all these network elements to ensure consistent security, performance, and reliability.

That concept of network standardization across any network infrastructure is the key to defining modern network compliance and understanding why it is so critically important in today’s IT environment.

Network Compliance Relies on a Configuration Standard

Network teams have to keep up with the speed of business to help drive new and differentiated services by adopting vendor agnostic automation in order to utilize all technologies both old and new. It’s imperative that the network team is no longer seen as the bottleneck to innovative new services, but instead becomes a strategic partner to leverage to help the business achieve their goals.

The Importance of Becoming a Strategic Partner for Innovation
Historically, the network is seen as the bottleneck to innovation instead of a strategic partner within IT. Most network teams are viewed as slow to change and reactive as opposed to a strategic enabler. The reality is that their toolsets have been holding them back from being able to keep up with the speed of business as well as the reliance on time consuming manual processes.

But, the network will have to become a strategic partner for innovation and digital transformation. They must become capable of driving new and differentiated services for the business with operational readiness to support digital transformation efforts. The only true way to make this a reality is by successfully adopting network automation. organizations can re-think the way they traditionally manage their networks in order to optimize network and infrastructure operations, lower costs, and simplify and/or increase agility in an effort to support new levels of innovation and company growth.

This is network compliance.

Network Compliance in a Cloudy World

These concepts make a lot of sense in a world where networks are comprised of traditional CLI-based physical devices, but with the addition of cloud-based network services and cloud-native network infrastructure, your network can start to feel a bit more like the wild, wild west.

How do you bring the concept of CLI-focused configuration compliance into the cloudy world of networking where CLI isn’t the way you configure and manage network services? The answer is by using the well-defined APIs that are available to create and manage these cloud network services and using their schema-based output as the basis for building a configuration standard. This allows network teams to now define standardized network policies that can be applied to any part of the network ­­– physical, virtual or cloud – and ensure that the state of network compliance is achieved end-to-end, providing a high degree of trust and confidence in the entire network and lays the foundation for accomplishing more complex network automation.

To dive further into the importance of network compliance, listen to our recent Packet Pusher podcast. Our CTO Chris Wade joins Ethan Banks and Greg Ferro to help enterprises better understand how to bring your network out of the wild, wild west through automation and validation.