Itential Automation Service at #NFD36

Network Automation and Orchestration

Itential occupies a very interesting space in #networkautomation and #networkorchestration today, and a group of delegates with Tech Field Day got to hear the latest from them: the Itential Automation Service. From a #NetOps perspective, Itential is enabling organizations to orchestrate their automations in production: manage and share their bespoke automation tooling (e.g., scripts, IAC, and playbooks) amongst teams, including users with different roles, and build more complex orchestrated workflows.

Automation in Production

VP of Product Peter Sprygada gave a helpful intro on the evolution of network automation, and talked us through the need to achieve a "product mindset" with automations. I'll admit I didn't get it at first, but I was persuaded as he built out the story and we saw some helpful persona-focused supporting demos from Wyatt Sullivan , Rich Martin , and Dan Sullivan .

I'll take the term "product mindset" and say that this perspective is how you can put bespoke automations (stand-alone and sequences of automations) into production and integrate them into #NetOps processes, taking that holistic view that I've been promoting thru TNOps . Using them in production implies repeatability and deploying at scale.

This capability provides an extremely useful framework for an organization's automation capabilities, and helps drive maturity by putting automations into production:

• More users can access and execute automation scripts without having to be skilled automation SMEs
• Scripts can be chained together - Orchestrated - to automate more complex workflows and processes
• Its not a huge leap to see how this capability can extend to other tech domains, allowing orchestration of workflows across network, MCN, cloud, compute, storage, application, and other IT tech domains. (Note that this was not implied by Itential in their #NFD36 presentations, but in my personal "automate all the things" hopes and dreams, it's not a leap to see that this concept of cross-domain IT orchestration of this nature is within reach with tools like this.)

This work builds on Itential's torero announcements back at the Network Automation Forum (NAF) #AutoCon1 in May 2024. You can see their torero announcement here:

https://youtu.be/E7iVZXKYez0?si=MNQhMo4OV3v5qqFH

You can also see all NAF videos on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/@NetworkAutomationForum

If you're attending #AutoCon2 in Denver in Nov 2024, you can also see and speak with Itential there.

Why Itential Automation Service Matters

As a co-founder of NAF, you can imagine that I'd be excited about this capability being introduced into the network automation ecosystem. This represents a very important fusion of (1) the need and ability of more and more organizations to do what they need to do with custom scripts and tools, and (2) chaining logic together across diverse tools. The fact that this vendor capability works intentionally with open source customer automation capabilities is a proof point of the big table that exists for solutions in the network automation community. Simply put, this is good and encouraging.

Disclosures: I've been getting to know Itential since #AutoCon0, where they were (and continue to be) all in on supporting the broader #networkautomation community. Please don't take my word alone on what Itential is delivering here - see below for links to the video and the views of other delegates at #NFD36, and check out their #AutoCon presentations.

For More Info

You can see Itential's #NFD36 presentations here:

https://techfieldday.com/appearance/itential-presents-at-networking-field-day-36/

Please check out the views of other NFD delegates by looking for the #NFD36 tag on socials. You can see those links under "Links with Tag #NFD36" on the above page.