The Top 5 Reasons Your Network Needs Automation

As networks grow in complexity, network management becomes increasingly difficult. More connected devices mean more potential threats to manage. Without a proper monitoring solution, enterprises will find themselves overwhelmed when a network outage or issue occurs. Automated monitoring options help enterprises maintain network composure while snuffing out threats before they get out of control.

Some industries hate automation. It’s easy to hear AI replaces X amount of jobs, but automation in networking is here to make your job easier.

Root Cause Analysis

Enterprises utilizing network monitoring find significant use in root cause analysis. Instantly finding the root cause of a network issue without needing to search for it is like a scavenger hunt cheat code. You’ll win every time. Essentially, you’ll be able to put out the fire before it’s a fire. End-users won’t notice a difference. Some network monitoring solutions even provide specific fixes to enhance the process further.

Analytics reports are something that every team needs. Being able to recognize trends and normal user behavior is invaluable. I mentioned the Anthem medical data breach in a recent article, this attack could have been prevented if normal end-user behavior had been established. Machine learning can inform you of network details you may not have considered. This is a feature that gives you an advantage when it comes to improving your network. Network engineers can utilize detailed automatic reports for just about anything.

Automating the search for a root cause of a network issue is the most logical approach to network monitoring. Automation is sweeping across IT and this is certainly an area that should be prioritized for modern businesses. Enterprises waste far too much time searching for problems during latency or downtime. Teams working on network performance shouldn’t be firefighters, they should be working to improve networks through prevention and innovation.

Scalability

More devices are network dependent than ever, and it’s obvious this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. How enterprises deal with this change is dependent on their ability to scale. This is the case for the network itself, and the solutions used to improve network performance.

Many network monitoring solutions come with scalability options. They can provide scalability in areas like data centers, network environments, or remote locations. Managing your growing network shouldn’t require you to change network monitoring vendors. Vendors recognize this and have automated scalability as an included tool or as an add-on for their solution.

Monitoring

Network monitoring itself is a mostly automated solution keeping track of your network devices. Monitoring should not be a manual process in any key enterprise area, especially when it comes to network health, though. Every IT department relies on the network in some way, this is obvious, so shouldn’t network monitoring solutions be a staple for any company? This has not been the case.

Enterprises have interest in building the fastest network. I constantly hear talk about how eliminating net neutrality will allow ISPs to provide faster services, but if you’re not properly taking care of your network then increased speed won’t matter. Network monitoring solutions grant insights on where problems come from, how they got there, and analytic data.

Analytics

Tracking network trends allow your team to make decisions in an informed and data-driven way. A detailed history of problems occurring on a network makes efficiency-related changes more valuable. The best way to improve any network environment is to know where consistent problems exist and who these problems impact. In addition, network related technological advancements will be easier than ever to implement.

Analytics also provides insights on what to automate in a network environment. You’ll see where your weaknesses are. This data will emphasize your blind spots, so you’ll know exactly what to automate and when.

Network Automation

As network infrastructure grows in complexity, enterprises must focus on simplification through automation. Network automation solutions provide automation for areas like configuration, management, testing, deployment, and operations of network devices. Thus, mundane network management tasks become automated.

Network automation provides a variety of benefits, including lowered cost, increased control, faster speeds, and more. Automation reduces the complexities of a modern network by manual tasks, as it parallels the benefits of DevOps for development.