The Reality of Today’s Network Complexity: Your Network Exploded on the Internet

One thing that’s become pervasive is the realization that networks look and function much differently than they have in previous years. Recently, we’ve seen a huge acceleration in innovation and change that is forcing organizations to rethink the way they have traditionally been managed. This shift was the focus of my recent presentation at Networking Field Day 24.

Since cloud adoption really starting taking off about 10 years ago, network and cloud infrastructure have been seen as two separate entities managed by two separate teams. Each team focused on different tools, techniques, and mindsets. But the wall between the two teams is starting to dismantle and this is due in part to that the fact that in recent years, the network has essentially exploded on the internet.

Let’s look at what this means and network teams can adopt automation to successfully take back control of the chaos their networks are now experiencing.

Your Network Exploded on the Internet

The ugly truth of today’s network is that it has become a bit chaotic when you look at it across both network and cloud infrastructure. Over time the enterprise network has evolved from being a few branches connected by a data center to full-on connected chaos across data centers, clouds, SD-WAN controllers, edge, and more. And if you stop to visualize the full ecosystem of today’s modern network, here’s what you’ll find:

While no one ever set out to build their network to be this complex, the reality is that networks have reached this level of complexity naturally as each business unit and each individual owner has adopted the latest technology in efforts to optimize their impact to the business. While this chaos was created with the important purpose of connecting our users to a diversity of applications in order to drive more and more business value, the network has reached an inflection point where teams have to come together in order to maximize their network.

So, how can organizations take back control of this chaos to create the most reliable and secure network?

Take Back Control Through Automation

The only way to take back control is by working together across both the network and cloud teams to take a more collaborative and collective approach. Then teams can begin to leverage network automation as a more efficient and effective way to tackle network management across their entire ecosystem.

One of the biggest challenges of being able to implement cohesive automation is applying it to both network and cloud infrastructure, as they are inherently managed differently. Historically, network automation has been CLI dominant but with the exploded network we’re now seeing more and more APIs across both network and cloud. This poses an additional challenge for teams as they now need a way to automate across both CLI and API-based technologies.

While these challenges may seem daunting, the exciting part is that the networking innovation cycle is just getting started. Now that a lot of new networking concepts are software-based, we’re seeing an accelerant on network innovation. Teams are finding themselves in need to be prepared for how they can take advantage of this so they can support digital transformation efforts by being able to effectively and efficiently take on new technologies as well as have the ability to integrate it all together.

By understanding and successfully addressing the challenges of network management across this network explosion, organizations can start to take back control of their current chaotic landscape and finally be able to take full advantage of the network innovation that has occurred.

Itential is Network & Cloud Automation

Organizations have had to find ways to adopt new technologies and applications that drive business and the byproduct of that is a network that is reliable and secure enough to support it.

That’s why Itential’s products were purpose-built to support both network and cloud infrastructure with the capabilities to automate across both CLI and API-based services. During Itential’s presentation a Networking Field Day 24, our team showcased how Itential’s applications support this notion:

• Itential’s Automation Gateway organizes CLI-based automations of different types, shares them inside and outside the Networking organization, and allows them to be run with proper authorization, security, and accountability.
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• Itential’s Automation Studio quickly builds network automations across any on-prem and cloud network infrastructure or IT system, simplifying the process of using APIs in a low-code, drag-and-drop environment.
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• Itential’s Configuration Manager provides a modernized and robust approach to achieving operational consistency by defining a configuration compliance and remediation strategy across network devices and cloud native infrastructure.
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Be sure to watch the full recap in our on-demand Networking Field Day 24 presentations.