To keep pace with modern application strategies, the growing number of network technologies and the distributed nature of hybrid IT architecture, networking teams need to automate and streamline the processes and tasks necessary for networking provisioning and management. The path to network automation should be well thought out; starting with simple automation tasks and maturing to more complex ones is a common approach that will give IT and network teams time to gain experience with network automation and ensure the least disruption. Early gains in efficiency – such as less time spent on provisioning tasks and less downtime from configuration errors – will quickly add up. And as networking teams gradually become more efficient with management and maintenance tasks, they will be able to spend more time on value-added work and less time manually configuring networks.
Network automation emphasizes skills carried by application architects and senior developers for project planning, achieving interim goals and taking a systems approach to automation, but they can’t do it alone. Domain experts in networking must bring their skill sets to the project and be an integral part of the process. The collaboration that is fostered through a network automation project will have a number of benefits, including making DevOps teams more efficient and effective.