Last week, Itential had the pleasure of presenting at another Networking Field Day event, where our team showcased how Itential is helping enterprises of all sizes deliver network automation at scale with our suite of network automation products. With this being our third appearance, I think it’s safe to say we’ve officially become NFD veterans.
We had the opportunity to present to 12 delegates that included the likes of Kevin Myers, John Herbert, Evan Mintzer, and of course, the live viewers that joined us online. We had a great time discussing network automation and how NetOps teams can successfully scale their network automation initiatives from scripts to self-service with the Itential Automation Platform.
In case you missed us live, here’s a breakdown of Itential’s presentation to watch on-demand:
Delivering Network Automation at Scale with Itential
Network engineers are stuck spending their days working through never-ending backlogs of network change requests across multiple network technologies including CLI devices, API-enabled controllers, and public cloud networking elements as well as ensuring adjacent tools are updated to reflect each change. In this presentation, Peter Sprygada, VP of Product Management at Itential, introduces the Itential product portfolio and discusses how Itential is helping enterprise organizations deliver network automation at scale throughout every stage of the journey.
Bring Your Own Automation: How to Onboard Existing Network Automations with Itential
For the first demo session of our presentation, Peter Sprygada stayed on stage to cover the first phase of the automation journey with Itential, “Onboarding and Use Existing Automation.” Since most network engineers are automating some tasks on their networks through a combination of open source tools such as Ansible and one-off scripts like Python, Itential provides an easy way for network teams to onboard those existing network automations so they don’t have to start from scratch. During this session, Peter demonstrates how Itential Automation Gateway (IAG) onboards and shares existing automations across the entire networking organization, while ensuring proper authorization, security, and accountability.
How to Automate Network Configuration Standardization with Itential
Next up on our automation journey, Rich Martin, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at Itential, takes on the second phase, “Automating Configuration Standardization.” Automation across modern network environments and teams requires automated configuration standardization to ensure any changes do not violate an organization’s network standards. During this demo, Rich showcases how to simplify configuration standardization with the Itential Automation Platform and create the compliance guardrails needed for secure and reliable end-to-end network automation.
How To Integrate a Federated Source of Truth for Network Automation with Itential
Up next, Karan Munalingal, Head of Solutions Engineering, took on possibly the most anticipated phase of the automation journey, “Integrating a Federated Source of Truth.” Maintaining a single source of truth for network configurations is challenging due to the proliferation of tools and processes such as IPAMs, CMDBs, and IT systems. Karan demoed how the Itential Automation Platform federates a distributed source of truth by integrating multiple systems and automating the change management process associated with network changes.
How to Enable Scalable Enterprise Automation with Itential
Last and certainly not least, Rich Martin came back on stage to close the presentation with the final phase on the automation journey, “Enabling Scalable Enterprise Automation.” Common and repeatable network requests, whether triggered by users or events, can account for a large portion of a network engineer’s workload. Rich tied all of our demos together to show how to publish end-to-end automations as self-service catalogs and APIs for use with IT systems and event management tools within the Itential Automation Platform.
Every Networking Field Day that Itential participates in is full of thoughtful and progressive conversations around network automation and we couldn’t be happier with the experience and the delegates that participated. Check out the full highlights of the day here and be on the lookout for our next NFD appearance.
If any of our demos caught your interest and seem like a good for to help progress your organization’s automation journey, you can create your free account of the Itential Automation Platform and get started automating today.
Tags: Configuration Management End-to-End Automation Itential Automation Platform Networking Field Day Source of Truth
Kristen H. Rachels
Chief Marketing Officer ‐ Itential
Kristen serves as Chief Marketing Officer for Itential, leading their go-to-market strategy and execution to accelerate the adoption and expansion of the company’s products and services.
