Itential Debuts at Networking Field Day 21

Last week, Itential had the honor of presenting at our very first Networking Field Day, which just so happened to be the largest one yet! While we may be rookies, we were definitely no stranger to the event that is held twice a year by Gestalt IT as a way to bring together the best independent networking thought leaders and companies to discuss network innovation and the core issues our industry deals with.

We had the opportunities to present to 12 delegates that included the likes of Kevin Myers, Kori Younger, Teren Bryson, Stefan Fouant and more. We really enjoyed our discussions and time with these delegates, who had some great things to say and did not shy away from asking tough questions.

In case you missed us live, here’s a breakdown of Itential’s presentation to watch on-demand:

Part I: Introduction to Itential & Our Guiding Principles for Network Automation

Chris Wade, Co-Founder, and CTO, opened our session by talking through our guiding principles for network automation and why the way organizations manage their network is just as important as ‘speeds and feeds.’ As networks become more complex and contain a distributed source of truth, it’s important that organizations use the right tool for the right job, leveraging existing investments, when thinking about network automation. Itential aims is to simplify and accelerate network automation, enabling organizations to produce sophisticated automations quickly with a DevOps mindset, treating the network as code. Watch Chris discuss the network landscape and how Itential is uniquely positioned to help enterprise and service providers along their automation journey. Watch Video >

Itential Automation Platform for Multi-Domain Networks

Part II: Integration, Abstraction & Federation

Anand Sanghani, Solution Engineer, kicks off the second segment of NFD by breaking down the integration, abstraction, and federation capabilities of the Itential Automation Platform (IAP). Anand discusses the integration layer of IAP, which provides an intent-based interface that connects to any IT system and network technology. This API first approach coupled with Itential’s rich adapter ecosystem and build your own adapter capabilities provides customers the flexibility to integrate with their desired technologies and avoid the common vendor lock-in associated with traditional tools. Lastly, Anand dives into Itential’s bring your own automation capabilities with Automation Gateway, a standalone application for transforming scripts into APIs to accelerate network automation activities. Watch Video >

Part III: Network Applications

In this third session from NFD, Alex Degitz, Product Manager, presents Itential’s Network Applications for operations, configuration, service orchestration and policy management of multi-domain networks. Alex discusses how organizations can break down network device configuration into components for Day 0 – Day N, Service, and Policy to more efficiently manage network elements and shows how Itential’s network applications support this approach. Lastly, Alex demos Itential’s Automation Studio, which integrates all these components in a low-code environment, making it easy for all types of participants to design, build, and run end-to-end network automations. Watch Video >

Part IV: Network Infrastructure as Code

Lastly, in our final session from NFD, Michael Wymer, VP of Engineering, presents Itential’s view of Network Infrastructure as Code and how the Itential Automation Platform enables organizations to drive network programmability. Michael discusses how the complexity of the network and the amount of changes taking place does not support the traditional deployment process and why it’s time to combine network automation logic with software principles to support a network infrastructure as code strategy. Watch Michael demo using source control as the source of truth, running tests inside of a Git Pipeline and triggering network deployment based off pipeline results. Watch Video >  

Last week’s event was better than ever imagined as great conversations occurred, questions were asked, and fun was had. Check out the full highlights of the day here. We can’t wait for the opportunities to bring more to our next Networking Field Day!