The Missed Opportunity in Networks Operations
Networks Operations (NetOps) has long been described by executive teams as “a highly strategic function to assure business success,” yet for decades it has been executed by the network operations teams as “a set of reactionary tactics.” Under the tactical plan, as multi-vendor and cloud connected networks grow in size and scope, so does the requirements for more people. When you double the size of a network, you’ll typically need to double the size of the network operations team. That is very tactical.
A little-known fact is every network needs to be maintained operational every day. Even when everything is ‘normal’, large cloud-connected networks require constant maintenance. A Global 500 enterprise may record 5,000 or more service operation tickets each month, each service ticket requiring hours of a technician’s time. In the case of bigger issues that directly affect production services, whole teams of NetOps engineers may need to rally together to resolve such issues, again using the same tactical tools and approaches that have been used for decades.
There is a missed opportunity to learn from our experience and to proactively seek out issues before they become problems. There is an opportunity to capture the goals of any network and simply put processes in place that proactively seek to maintain those goals. And all of this combined would provide for the missed opportunity to reduce the costs of Network Operations, since proactive processes are much more economical than reacting to service outages while customers are being lost.
Leveraging NetBrain’s Network Intent Technology
NetBrain has pioneered the way networks are managed, by focusing on service delivery, not blinking green lights on network devices. By understanding that networks are in place solely for the purpose of delivering application-centric services, NetBrain focuses on maintaining those desired outcomes, or Network Intents. These intents describe the connectivity, desired level of performance, and the associated security profiles as defined by applications that have been deployed.
By leveraging NetBrain’s Network Intent technology found in its Problem Diagnosis Automation System, any network problem can be solved by subject matter experts (SME) once, and then their experiences captured using a no-code engine to enable it to be shared by their peers and other colleagues, drastically reducing mean time to repair (MTTR) and the need for escalations. In addition, outages and service degradations can be prevented by continuously verifying these network intents, resolving, and detected discrepancies before they affect production.
NetBrain’s automation engine drives the use of Network Intents at scale. These Network intents can be used proactively to enforce all of the requirements for any size network and prevent outages, can be used in response to a service request to reduce MTTR, and can even be used interactively to leverage the experience of SMEs by any network engineer when the SME is not available.
NetBrain’s automation engine coupled with its Network Intent technology addresses the missed opportunity, and we now have the means to shift NetOps from Reactionary to Strategic, resulting is significant savings, increased customer satisfaction, and delivering a more defendable network operations function.
Contact us at [email protected] to learn how Evolving Solutions can help support your Network Operations with NetBrain.
