In every few years, your favorite networking equipment vendor/provider/manufacturer comes to you with something new, suggesting this is the thing you need to solve all your networking problems in order to deliver the " Business Outcomes " that your CxO team is most desperate to achieve since very next second after the " Big Bang ".
Over the years both Networking Industry & Networking OEMs keep coming with new ideas 💡 - Separation of Planes, Centralized life cycle management, BGP as the mothership protocol by fitting every possible thing within that, Separating Policy from - Topology Information & Reachability Information, The magical 3 letters word " SDN ", Policy Based Networking, Application Aware Networking, Automated remediation and last but not least " The Magical Intent Based Networking aka IBN " beside AI Ops and what not.
But, You often forgot to involve qualified business people in defining those modern networking standards and terms, and for whatever reasons neither side ever took interest to step into the other side of the territory to get its basics right or to discuss what's really needed.
So the choice you are left with at the movement is - either you start taking those small steps or wait for IBN to fail (Since SDN and Open Flow have been declared dead already) on delivering those " Business Outcomes " and the cycle keeps on repeating endlessly.
And in case you doubt this, remember:
1. The intent based networking draft doesn't define or talk about " Business Outcomes " or even " Business Intent ".
2. Crazy Network Automation nerds should go and read millions of lines of code that a lady wrote for Apollo 11, which A. Tells you there is fundamentally nothing new in doing that and B. You can only automate better if You truly know the science behind stuff that you are trying to automate but more importantly have been able to frame the problem well enough. But let's circle back on those details and why often network automation fails to deliver true " Business Outcomes " for later post.
3. Most Network Engineers are not on party list when it comes to CxO meetings and most CxOs are either not invited for Network Strategy and Planning Discussions. Beside some exceptions where either party is there to have a cup of good coffee ☕
So you either start living with those ideas and keep chasing the unicorns, or you can take a step back and start thinking how to really get it right...or let's have a chat 😉 since you must remember that living under a rock is a choice...
Over the years both Networking Industry & Networking OEMs keep coming with new ideas 💡 - Separation of Planes, Centralized life cycle management, BGP as the mothership protocol by fitting every possible thing within that, Separating Policy from - Topology Information & Reachability Information, The magical 3 letters word " SDN ", Policy Based Networking, Application Aware Networking, Automated remediation and last but not least " The Magical Intent Based Networking aka IBN " beside AI Ops and what not.
But, You often forgot to involve qualified business people in defining those modern networking standards and terms, and for whatever reasons neither side ever took interest to step into the other side of the territory to get its basics right or to discuss what's really needed.
So the choice you are left with at the movement is - either you start taking those small steps or wait for IBN to fail (Since SDN and Open Flow have been declared dead already) on delivering those " Business Outcomes " and the cycle keeps on repeating endlessly.
And in case you doubt this, remember:
1. The intent based networking draft doesn't define or talk about " Business Outcomes " or even " Business Intent ".
2. Crazy Network Automation nerds should go and read millions of lines of code that a lady wrote for Apollo 11, which A. Tells you there is fundamentally nothing new in doing that and B. You can only automate better if You truly know the science behind stuff that you are trying to automate but more importantly have been able to frame the problem well enough. But let's circle back on those details and why often network automation fails to deliver true " Business Outcomes " for later post.
3. Most Network Engineers are not on party list when it comes to CxO meetings and most CxOs are either not invited for Network Strategy and Planning Discussions. Beside some exceptions where either party is there to have a cup of good coffee ☕
So you either start living with those ideas and keep chasing the unicorns, or you can take a step back and start thinking how to really get it right...or let's have a chat 😉 since you must remember that living under a rock is a choice...
HTH...
A Network Artist 🎨
