Itential launched its Automation Gateway network automation service that simplifies network automation by seamlessly integrating with customer's existing solutions and scripts.

According to Itential, citing an upcoming research paper from Enterprise Management Associates, more than 60% of enterprises still utilize an ad-hoc manual and reactive script-based approach to automation.

Kristen Rachels, vice president of marketing at Itential, explained in an email to SDxCentral that Automation Gateway is targeted at organizations transitioning from ad-hoc command-line interface (CLI) script-based automation to a modern, programmable automation solution.

Rachels said that while it's clear the future of network automation is centered around controller and orchestrator concepts, not every organization can justify starting from scratch.

"The reality is that organizations need to leverage existing scripts with the addition of DevOps technologies as an integrated approach to help adoption and accelerate network automation strategies," Rachels noted, adding that rather than abandon the hours spent creating and maintaining custom scripts, Itential’s product leverages and extends a customer's automation investments.

Itential claims that by integrating with customers' existing ecosystem, network teams can focus on expanding their automation efforts.

"Itential enables NetOps teams to move toward more modern automation techniques with an API driven approach without having to rip and replace or start from scratch,” said Itential CTO Chris Wade in a release.

The product includes support for scripts written in Python, C, Bash, Perl and Ansible Playbooks. Once imported, a company's existing scripts can be converted to APIs and managed from within the Itential product.

The platform also features a centralized repository from which scripts and workflows can be executed, and support for event-driven automation, which can trigger network tasks based on notifications from services like Kafka or NETCONF.

Itential earlier this year announced that it deepened its integration with Cisco’s Network Services Orchestrator (NSO). The new functionality furthers network automation capabilities by making it possible to automate in a “low-code” environment that allows personnel with lower technical skills to use the tools. Products from the two companies possibly will work together under the Cisco umbrella.