NetBrain Technologies, Inc. has launched Release 11, its major new fourth-generation release version 11 of its Problem Diagnostic Automation system (PDAS) which further enables customers to drive the cost of network operations down by leveraging NetBrain's pioneering Intent-based technology throughout the system and automatically generating the thousands of network intents which describe the foundation of the entire hybrid network which can then be enforced to prevent outages.

Today's Enterprise hybrid networks are cloud-enabled, multi-vendor, highly distributed and include a litany of technologies, making operational management labor-intensive. With enterprise applications numbering into the thousands, each with its own network requirements, forward-looking organizations are shifting operational focus from device-by-device network management to the preservation of business outcomes at scale.

NetBrain invented the means to map and then automate any network as a compilation of desired outcomes or "network intents" for ongoing, Day 2 operations. Release 11 allows customers to capture the intent of their hybrid cloud-enabled network as a compilation of desired outcomes, and then uses automation throughout the system to proactively maintain those outcomes in real-time. This eliminates the need for operators and engineers to spend countless hours manually responding to network service issues, many of which have been resolved repeatedly in the past. By doing so, the majority of network outages can be prevented and the time it takes to address network incidents is dramatically reduced as well.

"Automation is foundational to the ability of infrastructure and operations (I&O) organizations to scale and exceed the demands of digital business... Automation profoundly affects roles, skills and expectations of I&O staff and leaders, and offers a means by which staff engagement, knowledge and experience can be improved," writes Chris Saunderson, research analyst at Gartner^. "By 2025, 25% of enterprises will automate more than half of their network activities, an increase from fewer than 8% of enterprises in early 2022."

Release 11 also includes a deep understanding of similarity among incidents and intended outcomes, regardless of the actual physical devices involved. It uses this to automatically generate and replicate the thousands of intents required for a typical enterprise. Common network intents which are associated with enterprise applications include bandwidth and throughput minimums, latency maximums, user authorization requirements, security filters and ACL enforcement, CPU and memory utilization, and Quality of Service. By doing so, NetBrain identifies network problems that happen as a result of human error, configuration drifts, or the unintended consequences of new applications that negatively affect the operation of previously deployed applications.

Release 11 also introduces universal and proactive access to NetBrain's automation engine and its intelligence for collaborative troubleshooting using the tools users prefer, including direct NetBrain web access, access through service desks (like ServiceNow), access through enterprise chat solutions (like MS-Teams) and even common email send/receive dialogs. This enables network issues to be acted upon quickly, capturing network issues while they are still occurring.

"For decades, network engineers have used manual tools and hand-crafted scripts to respond to network incidents reactively, consuming many hours to resolve even the most basic issues. The expertise to address hybrid networks and their cloud components has been elusive for all but the most adept operational staff. It's a constant challenge of resources, expertise and repair times which directly affects every organization's bottom line while increasing business risk across the board," said Lingping Gao, founder and CEO at NetBrain. "We changed all of that in three key ways: we automatically generate and then continuously validate the ability of the network to deliver required network services, we capture the combined knowledge of subject experts to enable re-use across the entire organization, and we make our diagnostic automation engine collaborative using access tools users are already familiar with."

NetBrain PDAS Release 11 is available now.