Itential “Modernizes” the Management of Legacy Network Configurations with a Low-Code Automation Platform | VanillaMore

Essential, a specialist in smart grid automation, updated its low-code network automation platform. This is meant to modernize the legacy network configuration and change management (NCCM) marketplace by simplifying and automating the management of network device configurations and remediation of compliance.

The 2019.1 version of its software further accelerates the adoption of network automation and empowers network engineering and IT operations teams across the enterprise with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop environment for creating workflows. end-to-end automation for operations, configuration and orchestration of services. management.

Traditional network configuration and change management options remain highly manual and CLI driven, forcing network engineers to sift through thousands of configuration files to find the right version to make a change to the network. With such a degree of manual involvement, human error accounts for over 35% of network outages. Studies also show that the cost of unplanned network downtime averages several hundred thousand dollars per hour, resulting in massive loss of revenue, productivity and reputation.

“Today’s businesses and service providers are facing increased network configuration changes and patch updates due to complex network environments, ongoing compliance requirements and pressure from services. based networks that depend on an agile network to deliver services, ”said Mike Fratto, senior analyst at 451 Research. “Today’s tools only proliferate manual processes and are unable to keep pace, which is why automation solutions like Itential are essential for today’s modern networks. “

Itential 2019.1 helps organizations replace manual tasks with automated processes and eliminates the current challenges associated with managing network configuration. With the addition of several new advanced features to its network automation platform, Itential simplifies device configuration and management for multi-domain environments.

From branch site commissioning, CPE and device commissioning, firewall IP route automation, software upgrade and device migration, Itential’s Configuration Manager provides comprehensive functionality that enables businesses to deliver services faster, dynamically respond to changing network conditions, and gain in process and configuration. agility.

The Itential configuration manager offers users the ability to:

• Define and manage the gold configuration – Mitigate configuration drift by defining the “Golden Configuration” database for devices deployed in your network. With a tree-based parent-child configuration inheritance structure, device configuration management is centralized across your network, eliminating errors when managing multiple base models at the domain / level. controller for different classes of devices.
• Correction without intervention and based on the configuration drift score – Monitor compliance score and configuration drift errors / warnings for each device in your network. Easily schedule the automation of zero-touch score-based remediation through a workflow, which is only executed when certain compliance criteria are met.
• Flexible and streamlined device management capabilities – Reduce the complexity of managing devices in multi-domain environments as well as human error associated with managing device configurations with scripting tools. View and edit devices in deployments across your organization, manage device groups, backup devices, and compare device backup configurations in multiple combinations.
• Robust device compliance analysis – Get a complete overview of the compliance level of all your devices on the network and identify the top issues to be addressed at tree and node level with Itential’s consolidated dashboard. Analyzing individual devices allows you to quickly resolve compliance issues.
• Simplify device compliance audits – Simplify device compliance auditing by evaluating current and historical compliance score and configuration drift details for each device. Users are able to resolve issues quickly, effectively eliminating side-by-side device configuration comparisons via Excel or text files.

Additionally, Itential 2019.1 includes new platform features that improve overall usability and extend DevOps principles to NetOps groups with the addition of Automation Catalog, Global Search and Tags, and Single Sign-On ( SSO) via OpenIDConnect.

Itential’s Automation Catalog allows organizations to expose network automations to more departments by allowing them to perform specific tasks. Users have a self-service catalog to create, view, and run automations, as well as the ability to manually start or schedule one-time or recurring automations.

“Network automation is a strategic priority for businesses and service providers, but the existing disparate silos of point-of-network configuration and change management solutions cannot scale to meet the needs of an infrastructure. modern, ”said Chris Wade, CTO, Itential.

“Itential 2019.1 facilitates the migration from NCCM to orchestration by providing integrated change management, configuration and remediation capabilities that eliminate these domain-specific automation silos and provide end-to-end network automation.

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