Transform Customer Experiences and Network Efficiencies with NetOps Automation
Automate NetOps to streamline business and IT processes and improve customer experiences while unlocking savings and increasing revenue
From home deliveries to streaming and video services, the past couple of years have taught us that customers crave tailored and personalized experiences—anytime, anywhere. While it may seem practical to increase the frequency and quality of these interactions, working with industry-leading organizations has taught me that rich customer experiences start from the inside out, with well-maintained network operations that can lead to cost savings and revenue streams across all business areas. For this reason, network automation is a necessity – not a choice – if organizations wish to stay competitive in the market and consistently provide world-class customer experiences.
NetOps teams that roll out and support digital transformation strategies are feeling the heat to deliver premier services to customers. The typical network engineer spends more than 400 hours annually (or about 10 weeks of the calendar year) dedicated to only network troubleshooting.1 So, it’s no wonder that network teams are under unprecedented pressure to safeguard business continuity, ensure quality of service, and maintain vigilant security, at all costs. As a result, Gartner predicts that organizations will need to implement hyper automation and be able to rapidly identify, vet, and automate as many business and IT processes as possible to succeed.2
Automating NetOps can help organizations address massive shifts toward digital transformation, managing multi-vendor and hybrid infrastructure and service request queues. But more importantly, it can free valuable resources to focus on innovation and technology to offer new and improved customer experiences and drive the business forward. Although digital transformation elevates the customer experience while minimizing security risks, the scale and complexity of IT can make automating network operations look daunting—but it doesn’t have to be.
If done properly and with expert guidance, organizations can automate more than 70 percent of their network change activities, which will allow them to reduce the number of outages by at least 50 percent and deliver services to their business stakeholders 50 percent faster.3 Numbers like these speak loudly.
By embracing new technologies and advancing automation with machine learning, NetOps teams can improve business outcomes with these benefits:
- NetOps at scale. Up to 95 percent of network changes are done manually.4 Automation removes time-consuming tasks and enables network engineers to focus on more strategic initiatives. Also, automating repetitive tasks is the first step in evolving to an intent-based network that automatically responds to administrators’ requests.
- Proactive testing. Automating network tests can help you avoid costly and time-consuming network outages and gain real-time insights into service quality, all of which reduces the burden of repetitive workloads on your team.
- Meaningful insights. Large amounts of data can be crippling. But with integrated machine learning, algorithms can be configured to automatically monitor and collect NetOps-relevant information and provide insights.
- Visualized data. With key metrics that provide visibility into the entire infrastructure, IT leaders can catch blind spots to reveal potential security weaknesses before they result in liability.
- Securing the enterprise. Policy algorithms and improved analysis can reveal security gaps that leave networks vulnerable to cyber intrusions, making it easier to manage network security.
Leveraging IT automation to manage increasing network complexity beyond manual processes and human analysis has never been more vital—making the role of automating your NetOps more critical than ever.
Unlock the benefits with IT skills and expertise
One of the crucial goals of integrating automation and NetOps is to enable a more agile, proactive, and self-operating network. But self-operating doesn’t necessarily mean the network functions without human interaction. The strength of your team is critical to your success. That’s why transforming skillsets, upskilling network engineers, and gaining expert guidance are fundamental to supporting network automation strategies.
Cisco Business Critical Services provides guidance at every step of your journey as you embrace automation and reimagine IT for agility, growth, and innovation. At different times, you may need to augment your workforce, seek 1:1 expert coaching based on specific use cases, and/or gain access to a top talent pool and cutting-edge intellectual capital. With our expertise—powered by Cisco analytics, insights, and automation—you can address your top-priority projects throughout the technology lifecycle, with guidance when and where you need it.
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