Networking leaders cite network automation as one of their top 3 strategic priorities, says Gartner
Itential, the leader in network and cloud automation software, announced it has been named a Representative Vendor, for the third consecutive time, in the Gartner Market Guide for Network Automation Tools published in February 2022.
According to Gartner, organizations are increasingly turning to network automation solutions to reduce cycle times for network activities, improve agility and efficiency, and lower costs to align with digital and cloud strategies. Interest in technologies such as CI/CD, agile, Infrastructure as Code, and DevOps are also increasing, and all of them require network automation. In fact, networking leaders often cite network automation as one of the top 3 strategic priorities in their initiatives. Gartner says its client inquiries have nearly doubled the past two years as organizations look to leverage the technology to meet their business objectives.
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The Gartner Market Guide for Network Automation Tools indicates that more enterprises are looking for software to help them manage the complexities of the shift to hybrid cloud networking, and that number is expected to continue to grow.
“Enterprises are recognizing that network automation will play a critical role in the ways they evolve their networks to meet tomorrow’s next-generation use cases,” said Chris Wade, Co-Founder and CTO of Itential. “A shift to hybrid cloud networking is already an important part of that evolution. The Gartner Market Guide for Network Automation Tools indicates that more enterprises are looking for software to help them manage the complexities of that shift, and that number is expected to continue to grow.”
Despite the apparent benefits of network automation, over 65 percent of enterprise networking activities are still being performed manually. That can lead to bottlenecks in provisioning and in incident resolution, while increasing the likelihood of human errors. However, Gartner expects the number of enterprises automating more than half of their network activities to grow to 25 percent by 2025.
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For Infrastructure and Operation (I&O) leaders to evolve from manual network activities (“ClickOps”) to automated activities (“NetDevOps”), leaders should invest in network automation tools with the following capabilities:
- Tools that allow you to leverage your existing network automation investments, by supporting existing network automation tools already in place (Ansible or Python, for example).
- Allow you to capture and store both device configurations (configuration files) and operational network state (active routing tables, for example).
- Have turnkey GA supported integration plugins with the relevant tools and vendors in your environment such as ServiceNow, Teams, Slack, vCenter, Splunk, or Kubernetes.
- Prefer vendors that offer published, open, restful APIs that expose more than 90% of functionality. This allows for integration with other tools and for the export of data.
- Allow you to create customized workflows across multiple vendors in a simplified fashion, versus rigid out-of-the-box pre-canned options.
- Treat public cloud services as a first-class citizen, and can automate networking services inside of AWS, Azure, or your preferred public cloud provider.
Itential is the only automation platform built to support both network and cloud, making it easy for enterprise organizations to maintain network configuration and compliance, reduce manual operations, and simplify hybrid cloud network management. The Itential Automation Platform is a low-code solution that seamlessly integrates with any IT system and network technologies for end-to-end network configuration, compliance, and automation. With over 300+ Pre-Built Automations for top use cases and integrations to any system, Itential enables enterprise teams to maximize ROI on existing investments and start automating quickly.