4 Reasons Why Network Automation is a Necessity
The world is changing, and so are the ways that companies operate. As a result of this change, IT infrastructure teams are often caught in a very difficult and almost winless balancing act. They are forced to support many disparate systems with increasing complexity while delivering reliable services and enabling businesses to grow.
The move to the cloud, expanding to multi-cloud, and the use of Kubernetes and virtualization have enabled significant productivity gains, but have also increased the magnitude of complexity concerning IT management. Below are 4 key challenges to managing today’s complex IT infrastructure and why network automation is a necessity.
1. Increasing Complexity
Digital transformation initiatives enabled exciting opportunities for businesses, but are powered by a myriad of new applications, systems, and networks to connect them. They typically span on-premise to the cloud and mobile.
It comes as no surprise that surveys of network engineers consistently cite increased complexity as their major challenge. Several recent internet-wide outages at AWS and Facebook came as a direct result of misconfiguring of complex settings. IT teams are looking for solutions to overcome these challenges and avoid human error.
2. Multi-Vendor Networks with a Mix of New & Legacy Devices
IT managers and network engineers supporting a business are encountering a massive array of equipment to make their networks function efficiently. This equipment likely includes firewalls, security devices such as IDS/IPS, network switches and routers, servers, and mobile devices.
With so much to keep track of, each device poses a challenge far beyond what even the best network engineers can manually control, configure, or secure. Even the most-skilled network administrators can benefit from automation to reduce complexity, the margin for error and enable a larger team to do more faster.
3. The Need for Better Security and Availability
As networks grow, the demand on the network – and the supporting IT team – to deliver service and maintain a secure posture increases significantly. While legacy networks were simpler and easier to secure, hybrid modern networks encounter rapid change, on-the-fly deployments and must also face zero-day attacks.
Network management solutions to accommodate these requirements must rely heavily on increased automation to reduce the chances of human error and be able to scale easily.
4. Eliminating the Human Element from Infrastructure Management
Automating network device configurations is not only good for increasing the reliability of IT systems, but it can also mitigate the security risk caused by human error. However, it’s not about staff reduction – it’s about becoming more efficient, removing complexity, and removing human error from operations.
With Automation, IT staff can spend more quality time on strategic activities like R&D or growth related initiatives instead of administrative work like updating configurations with manual laborious scripts – all while achieving higher returns on IT investments.
The Case for Network Automation
Network Automation is a necessity for companies that want to scale, simplify management tasks, and reduce risk. BackBox Intelligent Network Automation removes complexity to make network management, easier.
We help companies save time, money and resources while enabling a more resilient network. To learn how BackBox Intelligent Network Automation can help your company contact us today at: 1-833-BACKBOX.
