Network Automation is Software Development

A Managers’ 10,000’ view of Network Automation

Let me say this clearly, network automation is Software Development.

Obviously you say?  Perhaps not to all.

I feel this is a key contributor to why network automation hasn't had a significant rollout (yet). It is no longer just network engineering.

It is software development for a community that may not be too fond of software development.  Engineers who may; in fact, have chosen network engineering in order to avoid software development.  I've never heard that articulated clearly.  The more advanced folks in the network automation community went from the CLI to DevOps and CI/CD and; at best, just assumed everyone knew they were talking about software development.

I am concerned that I am unable to find clear definitions, requirements, standards, policies, procedures, development tools, guides, service rollout plans, testing requirements and plans, delivery to operations doc sets, etc.     This is pretty normal stuff for software development.  Without some formal guidance on how to do things, it becomes ad hoc.

Ad hoc is not the way to a funding source's heart.     I would posit that most network automation is not mature enough at this point to have developed that guidance.

It's software development so are there existing frameworks we can leverage?

I know that the Network Automation Forum community is working towards those things, but as an old-school manager, I would REALLY like to see the roadmap on how to get there, at a minimum.

Managers and funding sources are big fans of maturity (aka the perception of risk avoidance/or at least some mitigation) when determining expenditures of resources.

On the plus side, network automation is well ahead of AI, which in a couple of years will evolve into SkyNet and kill us all.

Business impacting network automation is hard.   That’s why adoption is slow.  Network automation requires “starting” with a really good network engineer.   That person has to have a well-rounded set of skills and enough experience to understand the subtle (and not so subtle) aspects of taking the humans out of some (most?) of the technical loops.    Once you have your “starter” network engineer, you have to add lots of additional skills and training.    Network automation isn’t just a matter of picking up some Python and bolting on some enhanced scripting.   Oh no my friends, lots more than that…

Are these skills you want your network engineers to learn and develop?  Is it necessary to support the business goals?   Is the enterprise willing to devote the time, energy and funds to get your network engineers to a point where they have these skills?  Are these skills you will hire versus a more traditional network engineer?

It may be worth mentioning that most of the audience here has already spent the time, effort, and years to gain the proficiency needed to do this type of development.  This is next-level network engineering.

It's important not to lose sight of the fact that not everyone is as far along.

Now that we know what it is, we can start to have richer conversations about how to design, build, support, and use network automation to provide improved services to our customers.