User Review
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Automation Myths- Network automation promises an impressive array of benefits for the enterprise: reduced provisioning time for new services, improved application performance and scalability, fast and accurate problem diagnostics and remediation and, above all, freeing up network engineers from the burden of performing repetitive tasks and eliminating human error. It’s clear the workflow and automation revolution is underway.
According to recent findings published by 451 Research, “Enterprises will be adopting network automation in the next three years, due to demands for faster network provisioning wherever enterprise assets reside. Network IT must manage networking in a broader variety of environments spanning multiple cloud networks, between clouds, and in containerized environments in addition to hypervisor, and physical networking and manual configuration will be untenable. The network in this case extends beyond routing and switching to application delivery controllers and load balancing, TLS encryption handling, application front-end support, and security functions, which all have to be included in the realm of network automation. Automation and orchestration suites will not only simplify network provisioning, but change the way IT manages networks.”
Yet despite the many obvious and oft-acknowledged advantages, most companies are still reluctant to embrace and deploy automation. Customers acknowledge the biggest barrier to entry is the fear that the automation journey will create new problems rather than solve existing ones. I routinely come up against the same list of objections, so I thought it would be a good idea to address some of these myths and hopefully put them to rest.
1. Automation Makes Network Teams Lose Control Over Their Domain
Network engineers often feel that allowing other teams to perform automation will create chaos, collision and violation of all sorts of compliance policies. They fear that once other groups get access to APIs that allow for automated provisioning and updates, network IT can no longer control who makes changes to the network and its components, and how.
