Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2023. Read them in this 15th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
3 hot network automation trends set to take off in 2023
By Rich Martin, Director of Technical Marketing,
Itential
As
we reflect back on 2022 and recognize the strides enterprises have made in
their automation journey, we're also eager to discuss the hot trends we know
will be the focus in the coming year. In recent months, we've seen enterprises
recognizing that there is no one tool that solves all their automation
challenges. Today, it's about using the right tool for the right job and having
the right team in place to do it.
Over
the past couple of years, we've also seen adoption of multiple clouds by
enterprise companies, which is a big step in the transformation journey. As we
move into 2023, expect even more to adopt a multi-cloud strategy, while others
will stay on their present course. Regardless of the cloud architecture they
choose, enterprises need to consider the further adoption of cloud-based
services, shifting their focus to enable network teams to deploy, automate, and
manage the network that stitches everything together.
Reflecting
on the current network landscape and looking ahead, there are three key trends
we believe will be evident by year's end:
#1:
Orchestrating Automations
As organizations realize the business and
technical benefits network automation and orchestration bring to their
operations - including improved productivity, cost reduction and overall
efficiency - demand for both will continue to rise. And as it does, the focus
will begin to shift more toward orchestration.
Today's
enterprise networking landscape is more complex than ever, consisting of
multiple domains distributed across those networks. Network
orchestration is the next step in the evolution of network management of
complex networks and will be a prevailing trend in 2023 as enterprises address
the need to automate network operations across multiple domains.
Enterprises understand the value of network automation. The
orchestration layer is where they'll tie all those automations together.
#2: NetDevOps and CI/CD Pipeline
Solutions Make An Impact
Network
operators are changing the way they think about network changes and
configuration management and are looking more to DevOps practices of building
and updating software with traditional CI/CD pipelines.
Offering low-code solutions will empower network teams and build organizations
that can function across different skill sets and different processes -
enabling everyone to participate in network orchestration.
We're likely to see enterprises continue to
evolve their networking strategies to treat their network infrastructures as
code. The rise of solutions to help enterprise customers adopt a modern network
operating model that delivers an agile, data-driven change management process
for the network will also continue.
#3: Multi-cloud/hybrid
cloud networking will take off in 2023
Enterprises also need to deploy orchestration
solutions that enable them to tie together multiple networks and multiple
domains, all while empowering multiple teams to work together to ensure network
operation reliability. Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud networking will continue to
make that possible and will accelerate in 2023.
Going forward, the network needs to be thought
of as programmable infrastructure to support a hybrid cloud architecture, just
as it operates in the public cloud and web scale cloud. Network automation
platforms targeted at networking infrastructure can tie together any networking
domain, whether it's traditional networking infrastructure or software-defined
wide-area networking (SD-WAN) branches. What results is full hybrid cloud
automation with enterprise networks that are as programmable as cloud compute
and storage.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rich Martin is Director of Technical
Marketing at Itential. Previously, Rich worked at several networking vendors as
both a Pre-Sales Systems Engineer and Systems Engineering Manager. He started
his career with a background in software development and Linux. Rich has a
passion for automation in the networking domain. At Itential he helps
networking teams get started quickly and move forward successfully on their
network automation journey.