Sponsored By: Gluware
The pace of innovation within enterprise companies is faster than ever. Most initiatives will have a requirement on the network infrastructure. This can be enabling the network for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) deployments, enabling Unified Commutations (UC), security-related and many more examples. Software development teams are now leveraging virtual compute and cloud resources enabling them to spin-up resources quickly and easily. When changes to the network are required, this usually becomes the “long pole in the tent” from a delivery standpoint, since many groups are still siloed and a high percentage of tasks are performed manually.
Network engineers and operations staff are facing a paradigm shift where knowing vendor-specific CLI is not enough, most are expected to become programmers. As automation is becoming more important in the networking world, most solutions involve trying to leverage a DevOps programming-based approach to the problem. This white paper examines how the networking industry got here, determining priorities for automation and a progressing approach which includes:
- Network Automation 1.0 – Scripting/Do-It-Yourself (D.I.Y), where learning a programming language like Python and becoming a programmer is one approach to start automating simple tasks
- Network Automation 2.0 – Leveraging an automation framework, like Ansible, which can help to get started quickly and with open-source, but still requires building programming skills to progress beyond simple tasks
- Networking Automation 3.0 – Leveraging a platform for automation like Gluware, which provides turnkey capability for tasks like network inventory, configuration drift and audit, and enables powerful configuration automation without becoming a programmer
The decision really becomes based on the time, skillset and budget available to enable your enterprise with network automation. Many enterprises are going down the path of attempting to re-train all the network staff to learn programming languages. Others are automating today with Gluware. Download the white paper to learn more!