Nothing better than spending a few days in Denver hanging out with some of the best and brightest in the network automation industry!
Yes, as you probably guessed, I’m talking about Network Automation Forum’s AutoCon 2 event, which just concluded last week.
If I say nothing else in this blog post, I want to emphasize a very simple realization: network automation feels more connected than it ever has.
Now, that is not to insinuate that we as an industry have everything figured out — far from it, in fact. However, AutoCon 2 demonstrated that while the challenges are real, the problems are understood, and, most importantly, there is a willingness across the industry to really tackle network automation head on.
Memorable Conversations at AutoCon 2
One of the things that I found particularly interesting was the different conversations I had with individuals and organizations. Generally speaking, it really didn’t matter the industry, the network, the role — the core set of problems seem to manifest themselves in almost the same way time and time again. How do we share automations? How do we collaborate and operationalize what we build? How do we drive efficiency across different domains, different teams?
Discussions both on stage as well as with individuals seem to emphasize this point. Many people cited common challenges like tool sprawl, a lack of central management for automations, and difficulties driving efficiency across the business. Teams continue to realize one of the defining keys to successfully turning to network automation is to build strong cross-team collaboration.
Another interesting observation from AutoCon 2 was the number of individuals and teams that seem to find it necessary to build their entire stack from scratch. In fact, I had an opportunity to have this very discussion with Dinesh Dutt and others. One of my hopes going forward is to see the Network Automation Forum community really come together here in the hopes that not every team feels like they need to build their entire automation and orchestration stack from scratch.
It’s also worth discussing the progress we’ve made in the network automation community in terms of building automations and adopting best practices. NetDevOps strategies like robust version control and using CI/CD pipelines are commonplace among network automation teams now — we’ve come a long way in several years, as we heard in many of the sessions over the week.
Of course, as teams build more automations, script sprawl, skillsets, access management, and other priorities can make operationalizing those automations challenging. Centralized, scalable solutions to eliminate automation bottlenecks are critical — a need that came up repeatedly at the event. Our next big step forward will be overcoming the barriers to scalable, integrated automation that delivers real value.
Network Automation Is Evolving to a Product-Centric Approach
During my presentation (Ethan Banks gave a great recap here), I alluded to this as I summarized the plethora of conversations I had with individuals and teams that are part of the community. One core belief I have is that network automation is quickly reaching a precipice where more advanced organizations have and will continue to evolve their use of network automation, taking a more product-centric mindset and approach to building and delivering solutions.
We’ve seen evidence of this shift from our customers here at Itential. Traditionally, network teams were consumers of automation, looking to optimize costs by running scripts and leveraging tools. But as we move forward, as tooling evolves and infrastructure changes and we learn new ways to think about automation, it’s time for NetDevOps teams to make the jump and become builders. You can explore this consumer/builder concept more in my blog from last week — and in my AutoCon 2 presentation on-demand when that comes out.
The concept of delivering internal infrastructure services as productized, self-serve outcomes a la public cloud is not new, but we’re now at the point where teams are seriously engaging with this goal. In fact, two of our customers presented at AutoCon 2 detailing their organizations’ automation and orchestration journeys and the role Itential has played in helping them achieve their goals. The videos will be out soon — in the meantime, Ethan Banks, CEO of Packet Pushers, has put together some great recap posts for each session on LinkedIn. See the two sessions with Itential customers below.
Intent-Based MPLS Router and WAN Provisioning
Southern California Edison – Matthew Deibel
Leveraging Network Automation for Seamless Infrastructure Service Delivery
Armstrong World Industries – Eric Anderson
One of the ways the journey to a product-centric mindset can accelerate is by taking advantage of and building on the work of many trailblazers in the industry. I believe Jeremy Schulman did a great job conveying this message in his session as he discussed only building it as a last resort, not a starting point.
These themes permeated many of the main stage presentations and, I believe, laid the groundwork for how NAF can continue to evolve. With a more focused effort between AutoCon conferences, NAF is very uniquely positioned to provide the vehicle that allows teams to deliver on network automation in their own organizations.
Regardless of whether or not my thoughts and predictions come true, one thing I feel very confident about is the overall state of network automation. AutoCon 2 showed us very clearly that network automation has moved from an aspiration to a mainstream, high-priority technology. Or, said more simply, network automation is no longer a fad but a necessary investment for organizations going forward.
These events have considerable value — community-driven insights and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing were major themes throughout AutoCon 2 as always. Real-world use cases, lessons learned, and collaborative discussions proved to be some of the most valuable aspects for attendees looking to refine their automation strategies.
AutoCon 2 was tremendous, and yet I feel like the best might be still to come. I for one am looking forward to AutoCon 3 and beyond. Even moreso, I look forward to continued discussions and engagements in the NAF community and on the NAF Slack channel.
But those are my thoughts and opinions. I would love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me to discuss on the NAF Slack channel, X, or LinkedIn.
Until next time, happy automating!!
Peter
Peter Sprygada
Vice President, Product Management ‐ Itential
Peter Sprygada serves as the Vice President, Product Management at Itential after serving as the Chief Technology Officer at Pureport where he was responsible for their multi-cloud network as a service interconnect platform. Prior to Pureport, Sprygada was a Distinguished Engineer for Red Hat, where he played the role of Chief Architect for the Ansible Automation Platform. Sprygada also held senior technical and leadership positions at Arista and Cisco, as well as several networking startups.
