Build & Expose Network Automations to Deliver Self-Service Networking

Network teams are spending more and more time building automations for their day-to-day tasks — scripts and other assets that are intended to be used personally or among a very small group of trusted team members. But as network operations scale, teams start to explore ways they can deliver network automation for self-service. The goal is a state where network services can be consumed the same way cloud services are consumed.

Self-service can mean different things to different teams, though. For network engineers, making automations self-service may include exposing automations to others on the network team with input validations included. For someone in DevOps, they may be thinking that self-service network automation will enable them to build more efficient CI/CD pipelines by requesting network operations as microservices. And for IT management, self-service means ultimately exposing automations to end users, internal or external, and allowing them to directly request network services through a system like ServiceNow.

The Itential Automation Platform provides all the tools needed for network teams to confidently build and expose their network automations as services in each of these different ways, so end users across the organization can request network automations without changing up the ways they work.

Compared to the DIY approach that some teams take, where they try to build self-service exposure capabilities themselves, Itential enables more confidence by incorporating more robust guardrails for safe exposure. That approach helps teams start delivering network services right away.

Advantages of Self-Service Networking

Self-service saves time and effort for the network engineers while delivering services faster to your end users, improving every aspect of your network management approach. Here are three major ways your team could benefit:

Streamline Network Operations & Enhance IT Service Management
By providing a single pane of glass to manage and orchestrate network workflows, Itential significantly streamlines network operations and enhances IT service management, speeding up network changes and increasing change volume. The platform also integrates with leading ITSM systems such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Remedy.

Ensure Trust & Security
The Itential Automation Platform provides granular access controls and robust auditing capabilities to ensure that only authorized users can access published workflows, so you no longer need to be concerned about what could go wrong if you share your automations. The platform also allows network teams to perform data validation and enforce policies, further enhancing the security and trustworthiness of published workflows.

Improve Business Agility
By publishing network workflows as services, network teams can improve business agility by making IT operations more efficient and responsive to business needs. And by automating routine tasks and processes, network teams will free up resources to focus on strategic initiatives that drive business growth and innovation.

How Itential Helps Deliver Safe, Secure Self-Service

Exposing your automations at scale for self-service networking can be scary if you don’t have the right tools, guardrails, or strategies in place. Our platform was purpose-built to allow everyone to participate in automation safely.

When you publish automations for exposure to external systems, you’re always able to ensure the right safeguards are in place. Our Operations Manager application within the platform gives you full control over access, data validations, and job auditing to ensure you can expose automations to your end users without frantically checking your network is up in the middle of the night — no, really.

I won’t leave you with a full technical deep dive into how Itential users can publish automations for exposure to different environments, how the safeguards work, or how your automations end up being consumed. Instead, I’ll point you towards this demo I did recently: “How to Publish & Expose Network Automations as a Service.”

In the demo, I walk step-by-step through three types of automation exposure: for use by the network team, for use by ServiceNow users, and for use in a DevOps pipeline. You’ll see how your automations can reach end users in each environment and learn the specifics of ensuring they’re secure.

With these practices and Itential’s unique capabilities, you’ll be able to deliver network change processes to whichever end users need them, no matter what systems they use to manage their work. Self-service networking reduces the workload on network engineers while driving business value and efficiency all across the organization — so what are you waiting for?