What is network automation?

Network Automation enables you to speed application deployment by automating network and security provisioning and management through the complete application lifecycles and across data center and cloud environments.

• Automate Your IT: Take the next step in digital transformation by virtualizing and automating network and security operations – an area of infrastructure that’s traditionally been largely hardware-based and required manual provisioning and management.
• Accelerate New App Development: Embrace new cloud-native applications and DevOps workflows with networking and security management that easily integrates into developer processes without requiring retooling.
• See Clearly Across Environments: Exchange a traditionally limited view of network traffic and security dependencies for global visibility and effortless troubleshooting of your network and security policies.
  

Network automation software finds the most efficient way to map, configure, provision, and manage a network. API-based automation replaces manual, command-line instructions to configure each networking device. The APIs can be invoked directly or go through a programming language, for example Python, Java or Go. Scripts are only one aspect of network automation—a modern automation platform monitors network resources when provisioning and verifies that a network will be able to handle a configuration request before implementing it.

A more sophisticated form of intelligent network automation uses machine learning and big data to determine how best to configure and manage a network to meet specific business goals. Intelligent networking uses a high-level, centralized view of the entire network to determine how a network should function to meet these goals, instead of configuring each port or device individually. 

An intent-based network takes a holistic view of how a business request will affect a network and offers different solutions to fulfill that request. Intent-based networking is sought after because network engineers can easily scale the network to meet different goals and reduce the number of misconfigurations due to human error.