Get Started with Itential: An Easy Onramp to Network Automation

In today’s world of hybrid and multi-cloud networking complexity, the need for network automation is more apparent than ever but many enterprises have struggled for years with getting started on their network automation journey. There have been many barriers which have prevented networking teams from even taking their first steps. Some of these barriers were organizational in nature, some barriers were due to a lack of tools and network programmability, and a large barrier has been the requirement to learn new skillsets around programming and APIs.

We saw a need to build a product that provides an easy onramp to network automation with the capabilities to mitigate the common challenges associated with onboarding automation. The Itential Automation Platform empowers networking teams to quickly start building network automations that provide real value to the entire organization.

Let’s take a look at the features and capabilities that make getting started with Itential network automation much easier than other approaches.

Modern Network Configuration & Compliance

Network compliance is the foundation for network automation and it’s where every automation journey starts. In order to trust the automation you build, every network team needs to have confidence that the network they are automating across is operating according to a common configuration standard. Having your entire network operating against common configuration standards provides the trust and confidence needed to accelerate automation initiatives.

Itental’s Configuration Manager application allows network teams to:

• Quickly build configuration standards for any networking device or service, whether it’s CLI or API driven, physical or cloud-based infrastructure.
• Leverage Golden Configurations that follow a tree structure that enable configurations to be defined in inheritable layers, which reduces the need for dozens of different standards, and makes updating the standard very easy.
• Run compliance checks manually or scheduled, and remediate any device.
• Manage compliance across both physical and cloud-based network infrastructure, which will create a stable foundation to accelerate network automation.

Leverage Existing Automation Scripts & Expand Network Automation Participation

We live in a time where there is a variety of network automation scripts available and network practitioners have already invested a lot of time and effort in using scripts and other tools to help automate small parts of their daily network routine. But, sharing these automation assets with the wider networking team and providing a secure method to execute them has been a challenge, severely limiting the reach and impact of network automation.

Itential’s Automation Gateway ensures teams can easily extend their automation reach by:

• Supporting the sharing, collaboration, and publishing of existing CLI-based automation scripts.
• Allowing network teams to onboard nearly any type of script type (Bash, Python/Netmiko/Nornir, Ansible, Terraform, and more) and securely share these assets with the team in a single location.
• Providing team members the ability to view these assets to understand how they work, build upon them, and start to utilize them as part of their daily toolset.
• Decorating scripts to make them available externally through a secure API, so that other authorized systems and tools can leverage these network automations.

Flexible & Reusable Integrations & Automations

One of the biggest hurdles to getting started with network automation is integrating your existing and new ecosystem of controllers and IT systems.

Itential’s Automation Studio was created to empower networking teams to avoid the requirement to become expert programmers and allow them to immediately start building and using network automation.

• Easily integrate with any IT System, Cloud or Network controller with Itential’s library of Pre-Built Integrations, or easily generate integrations using API documentation in minutes.
• Leverage a low-code, drag-and-drop canvas, where network teams can quickly build automations with the associated logic that is needed for each process.
• Onboard new use cases in minutes through Itential’s rich library of Pre-Built Automations for the top network automation use cases.
• Enable self-service by publishing in a catalog where authorized members can run them securely through the web interface or through an API method.

Our mission is to ensure the barrier to entry for network automation is as frictionless and easy as possible so teams can start reaping the true benefits it can provide from the very beginning. I’ll be hosting a live webinar next week to do a live demo of these very key capabilities and showcase how easy it is to get started with our platform. Save your seat here.

If you’re already ready to get started on your network automation journey, you can request a free 30 day trial of our cloud-native, fully managed offering with access to each of these capabilities or check out our other ways to get started with Itential here.