Maximizing Operational Consistency in Modern Networks

With increasingly large, complex, and dynamic network environments, operational consistency is essential for network teams to effectively mitigate disruptions, improve performance, and ensure optimal resource utilization. However, many organizations still struggle to establish an effective mix of people, processes, and technology.

The lack of consistency in network management can have a negative impact on operations, including security risks, increased costs, and reduced customer satisfaction. To avoid consequences on business activities, it is critical that network teams prioritize practices that allow extending their reach across technologies, enable tracking changes over environments, and help install a set of common standard operating procedures.

When it comes to tooling, three practices are at the core of consistent and effective network management.

1. Setting a single source of truth

Large enterprises often have disparate, siloed technology stacks composed of various technologies from a range of vendors. Typically, these stacks are managed by separate teams and different tools. In the context of network monitoring, the concept of a "single source of truth" refers to the practice of maintaining a centralized and authoritative repository of network-related data and information.

Standardizing on a single network management platform allows for better collaboration and knowledge sharing among different teams. This consistency helps to ensure that the knowledge network teams acquire can be most fully leveraged and universally applied across vendors and technologies. Network operators, network engineers, and security specialists can access a single set of accurate data, fostering a collaborative and uniform approach to network management. Ultimately, this shared visibility serves to improve operational consistency for the IT organization.

2. Tracking configuration changes

Network teams are responsible for managing complex, often fragile environments. Consequently, they are fearful of delivering the level of agility required by new digital initiatives due to concerns about potential network disruptions. By using appropriate tracking, network organizations can swiftly identify every modification and undo potentially problematic changes. This is especially useful when network experience issues can be associated with the latest changes, giving teams an opportunity to fix problems early—before they have an actual impact on business activities.

As companies are pressured to increase the agility of network operations processes, traditional change management practices can be a roadblock to accelerated network transformations. It is for these reasons that network teams need automated configuration management and pre- and post-change validation of network delivery. Without these capabilities, risk-averse network teams will be wary of managing a larger volume of changes more quickly, given all the potential exposure these changes can introduce. All of this points to the need to consolidate disparate network management tools and establish a unified platform capable of accurately tracking and visualizing the effects of changes.

3. Streamlining standard operating procedures

Traditional network management tools have failed to help operations teams navigate disruptive digital changes and skills shortages. Across IT organizations, automation levels have remained low. It is estimated that only 35% of network activities are fully automated today.  Network teams lack tools that enable them to standardize on the same workflows and processes while gaining coverage of new areas, such as connectivity paths to the cloud, SaaS, enterprise sites, and campus or branch Wi-Fi networks. As a result, most teams have to contend with a higher level of manual intervention, further exacerbating the skills shortage problem.

When IT organizations have teams using multiple, disconnected network management tools, they experience a higher percentage of problems resulting from manual handovers. If a large number of tools are employed, it also leads to suboptimal processes and policies because each tool will have overlapping capabilities, making it difficult, if not impossible, to enforce consistent controls. To reduce the associated risks, there is a compelling need to consolidate network management tools as much as possible. This consolidation is vital in limiting errors and improving overall network management practices.

Drawing it all together

In the near future, agile approaches such as NetDevOps or Network Reliability Engineering (NRE) will become increasingly mainstream. Agile network teams will have to guarantee consistent operations and reliable digital experience on a continuous basis under the strain of an increasing volume of changes. However, most potential adopters lack adequate tooling that can help standardize workflows, automate operations, and validate changes on a continuous basis. Therefore, it is the right time to review network management strategies, and establish approaches for improving operational consistency and getting prepared for the next round of transformation.

Every day, Broadcom helps IT organizations in navigating their journey through network transformation. Explore ways to enhance operational consistency by reading our complimentary white paper.