Don’t let automation break change management

The drive to automate more and more network operations is a good thing, but it exposes a need for network teams to ensure their change-management processes are in order. Networks are doing more, becoming integral to zero-trust security architectures, for example, and to end-to-end enterprise optimization endeavors. Networks are also connecting more things than ever: Mobile devices and IoT nodes continue to proliferate outside data centers and IaaS environments, while inside the enterprise, VMs and containers and separate environments segregating groups of them from each other for security purposes continue to proliferate. Unfortunately, network teams aren’t growing as fast as the network’s footprint or scope of functions. Automation at every level, from deeply embedded “autonomous networking” functionality all the way up through the ad-hoc automation network teams write themselves, offers network professionals the lifeline they need to keep up.