In today’s high-velocity business environment, enterprises are striving for agility, resilience, and speed. Yet many still rely on manual or semi-automated network operations that are reactive at best—and brittle at worst. The missing link in the enterprise transformation journey? A true digital nervous system, enabled by intelligent network automation.
The Hidden Engine of Digital Transformation? Your Network. From generative AI to cloud-native everything, we’re entering an era of unprecedented digital velocity. The companies thriving in this environment aren’t just experimenting with new technologies, they’re accelerating time to value.
While the tech world races ahead with AI, cloud, and edge innovation, there’s a quiet crisis lurking in the background: the shrinking pool of skilled network engineers. Ask any CIO or infrastructure leader and you’ll hear the same refrain: “We don’t have enough qualified people to run the networks we already have—let alone the ones we need tomorrow.” Retirements are rising. Demand is surging. The talent pipeline? Barely trickling. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: we can’t hire our way out of it.
Today’s CIO isn’t just the steward of infrastructure. You’re the orchestrator of innovation, the enabler of digital business, and increasingly, the driver of revenue. But here’s the hard truth: if your network is still managed manually, you’re operating with a strategic blind spot—and your competition knows it.
Last week, I attended the Network Automation Forum (NAF) Autocon3 event in Prague. One point from the opening keynote particularly resonated with me: network automation often begins as a response to personal pain, repetitive, manual tasks that consume time and energy. While automation can deliver tremendous value to the broader organization, network engineers frequently struggle to articulate that value to management and secure the resources needed to scale their efforts.
The landscape of network automation is evolving rapidly, and nowhere is this more apparent than at the NAF Autocon 2 event. Following the excitement of Autocon 0, the inaugural event just a year ago, Autocon 2 has further solidified the growing momentum behind network automation. Professionals from various sectors gathered in the Rockies to exchange insights, share success stories, and discuss challenges, all pointing toward one undeniable fact: network automation is no longer a distant future—it’s here, and it’s advancing quickly.
This is the second in a series of blog posts by the ONUG Collaborative AI-Driven NOC/SOC Automation project team, which is delving into Generative AI (GenAI use) cases for streamlining and automating NOC/SOC workflows. Here we describe several different approaches for adopting GenAI-enabled applications and tools and conclude by considering the benefits and challenges of each approach.
In the tech center of Denver, Autocon 0, the inaugural event of the Network Automation Forum (NAF), unfolded as a thoughtful exploration of the challenges surrounding network automation. Industry veterans Chris Grunderman and Scott Robohn set the stage for introspection, seeking to understand the reasons behind the comparatively slow adoption of network automation.
To excel in today’s economy, enterprise leaders are focused on accomplishing more with less. The accelerated pace of business transformation in the past four years has only added to the complexity of these goals.
By Ernest Lefner, Chief Product Officer, Gluware – The option of devoting resources, engineers, and time to building automation in-house or bringing in outside help to accelerate the process is no longer a realistic question.
Network automation can be transformative for an IT organization, but realizing the benefits of that transformation can take too long. Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) believes that part of the problem is a heavy reliance on homegrown network automation tools. According to EMA’s new research on data center network automation, 86% of IT and network teams try to measure their return on investment (ROI) in data center network automation. Of those, 51% expect to earn that ROI within two years. This means that time-to-value is a major priority for them. The top benefits they try to target with this ROI are improved operational efficiency, reduced security risk, improved compliance, and increased network agility.
The new Gluware® Intelligent Network Automation 4.2 release delivers security-enhancing features and capabilities in demand from Global 2000 enterprise IT customers. Security is consistently one
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