Tier 1 Service Provider Accelerates Router Upgrades 44x with Itential

INDUSTRY

Communications Service Provider

GOALS

Optimize Upgrade Maintenance Windows
Eliminate Manual Errors
Reduce Costs
Reduce Risks of Network Downtime

USE CASES

Router Upgrades

INTEGRATIONS

Key Results

Accelerated upgrade time per router from 4 hours to 45 minutes.

Increased router upgrades per maintenance window by 4400%.

Significantly reduced risk of human error.

Automated 10,000 jobs annually to alleviate engineer workloads.

Saved over $200k per router upgrade cycle.

Challenge: Delayed Manual Router Upgrades, Fraught with Human Error

With more than 100 million subscribers and more than 150,000 employees relying on its network, this leading wireless telecommunications provider couldn’t afford downtime for upgrading their network. Every year, the company allotted just 200 five-hour maintenance windows for network updates. At one point, its operations team faced a daunting 10,000 network maintenance jobs with only 1,000 hours of available time to perform them.

A typical manual router upgrade, for example, would take hours to complete with pre- and post-checks. If employees increased their pace, they risked introducing mistakes that could drastically impact the company’s critical network areas, such as its core router site. In addition to excessive demands for network updates, the customer faced impending OPEX restrictions that reduced employee resources to complete the changes manually. In response, they began delaying upgrades.

This company’s operations staff needed an automation-driven solution that could take the pressure off its employees and supercharge its maintenance capabilities, while reducing the risk of significant network failures.

It was impossible to get through all the upgrades we needed to make with the change windows we had. Every year it was just going to keep piling up.

Network Engineer

Solution: Orchestrating Major Router Updates at Scale with Itential

Having trusted Itential on a previous project, this telecommunications giant chose the Itential Platform to orchestrate the upgrades of more than 800 mid-sized routers in just one month. The manual benchmark to beat was one router every 2.5 hours.

They also leveraged the platform to accelerate changes to the company’s core router site, which required more than four hours to complete a single manual update. Speed, in this case, was not the only requirement. Company engineers needed assurance that faster updates would not introduce mistakes that would compromise the integrity of the network.

Itential was also used to deploy new virtual route reflectors to improve communications between routers. With Itential, they were able to automate and orchestrate router upgrades at scale through our:

Multi-Vendor Support: Ability to automate router upgrades for any network device or type in one single platform.
User-Friendly Workflow Builder: Drag-and-drop functionality abstracts network complexity and enables users to quickly create modular, reusable, scalable workflows.
Configuration Consistency & Validation: Robust pre-check and post-check policies with automatic rollback for managing Day 2 change management.

By leveraging Itential to automate our router upgrades, we were able to accelerate our cycle time per router, from 4 hours to 45 minutes. Without Itential, we would not have been able to perform the necessary upgrades required each year.

Senior Manager, Network Planning

Accelerating Router Deployments 44x Faster, Optimizing Uptime

With Itential’s platform, the company increased speed of deployment from just 2 router updates in a five-hour maintenance window to more than 90 in the same window — a 4,400% increase. This increase has the potential to produce more than $200,000 of cost savings per upgrade cycle. At that pace, the customer even began to consider if they could provide enough routers to meet demand.

Itential also helped the customer reduce manual update times to its core routing site from 4 hours to 45 minutes, while eliminating the potential for human error that could take down the network. This approach includes automation of the pre- and post-checks on all data and devices to ensure faster and more accurate upgrade deployments. Now, if something begins to go wrong during the update, engineers can pause or roll back their steps, which was much more difficult to do manually.

With the increased speed, accuracy and strides made in automating and orchestrating the operations and oversight of its networks, this massive wireless telecommunication company is planning to expand Itential’s capabilities to other parts of their business.