When Jeff Gray and his co-founders showed their first network automation prototype to a major network equipment manufacturer over a decade ago, the response was dismissive. The vendor questioned why anyone would want a system that constantly modified network configurations, calling it something that would get “really really busy.” The prevailing wisdom held that networks should be set-it-and-forget-it, with changes avoided to prevent cascading outages.
The modern networking landscape sees things very differently. The threat landscape has fundamentally altered the industry’s approach to network changes. Nation-state actors, vulnerability exploits and evolving attack vectors now force enterprises to constantly patch, remediate and tune their networks.
