Smarter networks: The power of automation
Ernst Kolmeijer
Product Director, Platform
The future of business runs on networks—but what happens when those networks can’t keep up? I’m seeing a lot of businesses expand and data flows multiply, making managing enterprise networks increasingly complex. The solution? Smarter networks powered by network automation.
Automation in network management could be a critical driver of that all-important operational efficiency. By leveraging intelligent tools, IT, operations, and support teams can transform how enterprises monitor, manage, and optimize their networks.
The growing complexity of network management
The IDC InfoBrief, Enterprise Horizons 2024: Technology Leaders’ Priorities on their Digital Business Journey revealed that 49% of global enterprise technology leaders intend to increase their use of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) or Network as a Services (NaaS) providers to support network management in the next 12 months as the traditional approach to network management is no longer sustainable.
That’s because network management is time and resource-consuming due to:
- Diverse connectivity needs: Every site will have slightly different connectivity needs which can influence which services and solutions are integrated. Managing a complex web of solutions like Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), Fixed Wireless connections, and even Low Earth Orbit to satellites means more services to procure, implement, monitor, manage, optimize, and troubleshoot if something goes wrong.
- Global operations: Managing networks across different regions introduces complexities like compliance with local regulations, variable performance or equipment standards, and dealing with multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs), billing challenges, and even time zone and language barriers.
These challenges can be exacerbated by manual processes, siloed tools, and limited visibility.
Why network automation is the answer
Well, it’s part of the answer. Network automation and the right tools provide the speed, accuracy, and intelligence needed for successful network management.
Network automation is the process of using software and technologies to automatically configure, manage, test, deploy, and operate network devices and services with minimal human intervention. It improves network efficiency, reduces human errors, and enhances scalability by automating routine tasks such as provisioning, configuration changes, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
From talking to Network Operations Managers across the globe, their main task is to ensure a seamless network performance. However, they have to deal with unpredictable network outages that disrupt business operations and lead to complaints from other departments. That is a huge challenge.
Network automation can serve them in multiple ways. First, pro-active fault detection will detect outages even before they notice, and solve it right away. Second, intelligent traffic monitoring powered with AI and Machine Learning can help to detect the most efficient route, which is not always from A to B.
The benefits of network automation for enterprises
From my experience with network visibility platform development, the benefits of network automation are:
- Operational efficiency: Automation can eliminate those repetitive tasks that can introduce error and accelerate workflows. For instance, provisioning a new site or service, which might take weeks using traditional methods, can be completed in hours with automated workflows.
- Proactive network monitoring: Automated systems can continuously monitor network performance, identifying potential issues before they escalate. This really allows IT teams to shift from reactive to proactive management and minimizes downtime, ensuring consistent performance for mission-critical applications.
- Proactive traffic routing: Solutions like Enhanced Internet from Expereo, proactively predict and identify how the 100,000 available networks are performing, then routes traffic across the best-performing network path to the required destination. This keeps your critical applications performing, your teams online, and your business functioning.
- Scalability: As businesses grow, so do their network requirements. Network automation enables enterprises to scale operations seamlessly, managing new locations, users, and services without overwhelming IT teams.
The role of APIs in network automation
APIs enable automation by seamlessly facilitating data interaction and transfers between systems and processes, eliminating manual effort and ensuring efficient, programmable workflows
In my experience, this is one of the gamechangers of network automation. So many companies will find operational efficiency difficult due to multiple management platforms, applications, and tools that all claim to provide visibility, management, or optimization capabilities, but they can often add more complexity than they do efficiency. More often than not they don’t integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack. Making a complete view of the network a challenge and keeping processes and optimizations slow.
This is one of the areas that sets Expereo’s Intelligent Internet platform, expereoOne, apart. expereoOne leverages API integration to plug into your existing stack and offer a complete picture of all sites and connectivity services. This enables:
- Seamless workflow integration: expereoOne’s APIs enable integration with IT service management (ITSM) platforms like ServiceNow, allowing enterprises to embed expereoOne into their incident management workflows. This ensures that case creation and resolution processes are automatically aligned with existing support structures, reducing downtime and improving response times.
- Inventory management & service visibility: expereoOne allows businesses to retrieve real-time data on sites and services, giving IT teams a complete and accurate inventory. This eliminates the need for fragmented tracking methods and enhances operational efficiency.
- Invoice integration: Easily retrieve essential financial information with your financial applications in a fully automated way, like invoice amount, date, currency, but also the applicable sites and services. This offers a way to further increase efficiency and manage all your global connectivity expenses, regardless of technology or provider.
Gain the competitive edge with network automation
In the race to stay competitive, enterprises cannot afford to be weighed down by legacy network management practices. Finding the right network automation solutions, capabilities and tools are the key to unlocking agility, efficiency, and scalability. By embracing a smarter network, businesses can:
- Deliver consistent, high-quality connectivity across global operations.
- Respond to evolving demands with unprecedented speed and precision.
- Support reliable application performance across all sites around the world.
- Empower IT teams to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.
The future of network management is here. And it’s smarter, faster, and more automated than ever before.
Talk to an expert today about how to make network management streamlined while your network evolves to meet the needs of your business both now and in the future.