At Itential, we strive to make network management easier for our customers who operate global enterprise scale networks and our new integration with Forward Networks, the industry leader in network assurance and intent-based verification, is another step toward that goal.
I’ve been working very closely with Fabrizio Maccioni, Director of Technical Marketing at Forward Networks to build out a very exciting new integration between our products that delivers seamless closed-loop automation across physical, virtual, and cloud networks. By combining the power of Itential’s low-code network automation platform with Forward Networks’ Digital Twin, our teams are enabling network operations teams to take full advantage of automated network configuration without the risk of unintended consequences from change windows.
The Power of Automation + Verification
Automation has become the dominant strategy for supporting the increasing complexity in modern networks. As organizations progress on their automation journey, building confidence and trust in the network is crucial.
The Itential Automation Platform provides NetOps teams a low-code, drag-and-drop interface for rapid automation as well as Pre-Built Automations for the most common operations tasks and use cases. The Forward Networks platform enables network operations engineers to verify that the automated workflows are correct and compliant with intent policies. Itential’s powerful integration capabilities with any IT system such as change management systems like ServiceNow and JIRA, ensure common operational knowledge as well as integrating with notification and source of truth systems to support distributed and cloud environments.
Capitalizing on these core capabilities, the integration between Itential and Forward Networks enables closed-loop network automation. Network changes initiated in our platform can be validated against Forward Networks mathematical model of the network, while anomalies identified by Forward Networks can be remediated via the Itential Automation Platform.
“Large enterprise-grade networks depend on automation capabilities to maintain network health and provision new mission-critical services and Itential’s easy-to-use platform is the only network automation solution that supports the reality of multi-environment networks. Through the Forward Networks and Itential integration, we can enable large organizations to embrace the benefits of automation coupled with Forward Networks, network verification and ensure network correctness, reliability and provide the assurance that everything works as promised and that the network is compliant.”
Delivering Closed-Loop Automation
The closed-loop automation process enabled by this integration acts as a safeguard to prevent any issues from becoming pervasive following a change window. With Itential’s Pre-Built Automations for top use cases coupled with the capabilities to design and build your own custom workflow with our drag-and-drop automation builder, within Itential’s Automation Studio, make it easy for network operations engineers to build an automation catalog that enables changes at scale.
By using our API integration with Forward Networks, Itential can verify routing, add intent checks, verify new service connectivity, check for side effects, and send notifications and verifications via Slack, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and email. Itential’s out of the box integrations with change management systems including ServiceNow and Jira ensure everyone is working from a single source of truth and expedites collaboration. In the event of an issue, the diff check functionality within the Forward Networks platform makes it easy to pinpoint which changes are causing any unplanned behavior.
To see the integration in action, check out a quick demo video from Fabrizio and I to see firsthand how easy it is to achieve closed-loop automation with the power of Itential and Forward Networks. You can also learn more about our partnership in the full press release.
Mike Elrom
Director of Customer & Tech Partner Enablement ‐ Itential
Mike Elrom is the Director of Customer & Tech Partner Enablement at Itential who has spent his entire professional career working on telecommunications networks. Holding roles within Network Operations and Software Development teams, Mike’s career has naturally progressed into network automation. At Itential, Mike has the pleasure of working with our customer’s network engineers while he and his team are responsible for enabling our customers to become successful automation engineers.
