Cisco seems to be proactively making right moves in its endevour of software push. The global hardware networking giant that launched an intent-based networking – Intuitive Network – last year has now added analytics tools in its networking portfolio including algorithms monitoring data center health, campus and branch Internet of things intelligence and software that monitors relationships between applications. The announcements that were made by senior executives during Cisco Live in Barcelona aims to create a network that can adapt and evolve on various fronts and assure the network managers that their intent will be delivered.
Traditionally networks have been managed in a manual way but with the gradual advancements in machine learning, analytics and artificial intelligence, the concept of intent-based networking systems (IBNS) that Gartner research vice president Andrew Lerner defined as a network systems that monitor, identify and react in real time to changing network conditions is becoming a reality. And, this is what companies like Cisco and Apstra are pushing for.
“We announced powerful new software innovations for the data center and enterprise focused squarely on assurance, ones that will enable the network to quickly identify the root cause of the toughest wired and wireless networking problems – real-time or historical – with suggested remediation to drive up productivity,” said Scott Harrell, senior vice president and general manager, enterprise networking business at Cisco.
According to Cisco, currently IT teams spend 43 percent of their time troubleshooting network issues. “They are challenged with finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. There are over 100 places where things can go wrong between the user and application and, as a result, IT spends significant amount of their energy and resources on collecting data as they do analyzing and resolving the issue,” said tech firm.
With new advanced analytics capabilities, Cisco is of the view that the system will delivers new levels of insight and visibility across the network—all the way to the user and their device, enabling IT to reduce the amount of time and money spent troubleshooting and be more proactive in identifying, diagnosing and even predicting issues across the network.
Over the past few years, the explosion of devices, adoption of cloud, and exponential growth of security threats are challenging the current approaches for building and managing networks. The US-based technology firm said that modern day network must anticipates operational issues, stops security threats in their tracks, and continues to learn, adapt and protect.
“We are taking another major step toward that ambitious goal with intent-based networking innovations designed to deliver contextual insights and assurance that will help transform IT from reactive to proactive,” stated David Goeckeler, executive vice president, Networking and Security Business at Cisco.
Cisco's intent-based networking portfolio gives network administrators the ability to define what they want the network to do, and having an automated network management platform create the desired state and enforce policies. Cisco does it with the help of Cisco DNA Center. This software driven console seats over underlying network infrastructure enabling IT manager automate policies, give insight and check health of network. Now, with the introduction of assurance capabilities – Cisco Network Assurance Engine – they can continuously verify the network is operating as intended.
Cisco said that nearly 200 customers are in early field trials with the new assurance technologies, including Robert Bosch GmbH, REWE Group, Houston Methodist Hospital and Scotiabank. More than 1,100 organisations are deploying the recently announced Catalyst 9000 Series switches, with 150 running DNA Center pilots. In the data center, Cisco has more than 14,500 Nexus 9000 customers, with a 45 percent ACI attach rate.
