How a Leading Health Insurance Provider Sunset HPNA & Reduced Device Backups From Hours to Minutes With Itential
Faced with a complex toolset and distributed network infrastructure post-merger, this company’s network team switched to Itential to replace legacy tech and extend their device backup capabilities to all resources, both API and CLI-based.
Escaping Tech Debt: The Need for Modern, Integrated Network Management
The leading healthcare insurance provider in North America sought to refresh their technology ecosystem after a merger left them with many disparate tools and systems for managing their network infrastructure.?
One of their main priorities was replacing their legacy tool HP Network Automation (HPNA), a point solution for the configuration management of traditional network devices. HPNA provides only limited vendor CLI support and no API support, which prevented the company from leveraging every device type, controller, or third-party system they chose for their network. Also, any automation of configuration management with HPNA requires custom code, which greatly increases the required investment and slows down automation adoption.
With backups required for over 2,500 devices across 6+ device types and a network that is both global and mission-critical, it was key that any migration to a new solution had to be seamless: it couldn’t involve any loss of data or problematic outages, and it had to not only replace the capabilities of HPNA but exceed them, extending the team’s reach to all their device types.
Why They Adopted Automated Config Management for CLI & API-Based Devices
The Itential Automation Platform has two key advantages over both HPNA and alternative solutions: integrations and an API-first approach. Itential is the only solution that enabled the company’s network team to manage all their devices, both CLI- and API-based, while maintaining all relevant data necessary over the migration.
With Itential, the network team was able to scale their configuration management, device backup, and storage capabilities to meet the needs of their evolving hybrid network through Itential’s:
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Reduced Backup Time from Hours to Mins & Expanded Config Management Across 6+ Device Types
Itential’s ability to automate both backups and the remediation process of network devices has increased the efficiency and reliability of the company’s network resources. With Itential’s robust southbound integrations for any CLI type or any API managed solution, the team was enabled to both simplify their toolset and expand their configuration management capabilities across their hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Building an Automation Roadmap With Itential
This first foray into network automation really got the ball rolling for the team – once the HPNA migration was up and running, they quickly implemented a BGP reroute automation use case, driving the process down from 10 minutes to less than 10 seconds. As their automation confidence grew, they were able to go faster while doing more, and now the team has expanded their automation journey with Itential. They are actively automating across ten other use cases for what were once repetitive daily tasks, with a dozen more on their immediate roadmap.?
Now, automation is central to their infrastructure strategy. Why? Because, according to a senior network engineer, “Itential just works. It wasn’t a heavy lift and is very easy to use.”
Interested in learning more about how to leverage automated configuration management across your entire hybrid network? Learn more about our platform here and continue reading more of our customer success stories here .
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