Best Practices For Network Automation – Breaking Defense Breaking Defense – Defense industry news, analysis and commentary – Breaking Defense

If Defense Department IT managers had their wish, they would want their networks to be better in four ways:

Network automation is designed to accomplish all that, and give analysts more control over and visibility into network resources. In this Q&A with Rich Lucente, principal DoD architect for Red Hat, we discuss how automation improves infrastructure availability, staff productivity, network security, and configuration compliance.

Breaking Defense: Why do organizations need to adopt automation?

Rich Lucente, Principal DoD Architect for Red Hat.

Lucente: The DoD and industry are under massive pressure to deliver services more quickly and securely. At the same time, IT is often viewed as both a roadblock and cost center. I would argue that it is neither when automation is adopted as a key supporting technology in digital transformation. It removes common roadblocks and reduces costs by: improving worker job satisfaction by automating mundane, repetitive tasks; improving efficiency; and reducing error rate by automating tasks and workflows.

And instead of IT being a cost center, resources are freed to implement impactful change. Automation enables organizations to digitally transform network operations and security while empowering them to develop better services and capabilities for end users.

Breaking Defense: What prevents organizations from adopting transformative automation?

Lucente: I would name five. First is misalignment between leadership and implementers. Managers must succinctly describe the reasons behind their path to automation, explain how it directly relates to each person, and set clearly defined and measurable tasks and goals. Leaders must also dedicate an appropriate amount of resources, both people and finances, so implementers can see that leadership fully supports the initiative.

Second is mismatched automation priorities. One-quarter of all implementers say they experience misalignment with leadership when it comes to setting automation priorities, determining which open source automation to use, or deciding the level to which infrastructure automation tasks are automated. This was highlighted in a Forrester Consulting thought leadership paper commissioned by Red Hat entitled, Enterprise open source automation drives innovation, July 2020.

Given the critical benefits that automation can bring to an organization, there is an urgent need to close this gap between the C-suite and implementers.

Third is indecision on choice of tool. Organizations can pare down the number of vendors to choose from by considering only those that provide complete support for their solution, offer vendor interoperability, provide simple adoption while offering massive scalability, feature agentless deployment to avoid use of proprietary systems, and support a vibrant ecosystem of partner content.

Uncertainty in the level of automation required is fourth.

Prior failed or unsatisfactory vendor proprietary automation implementations is the fifth factor. Too many vendors offer proprietary automation products that are limited in scope and only automate the product that vendor produces. Vendor proprietary automation forces administrators to become experts on myriad different automation tools, one per product, with different languages, syntax, and execution behaviors for each.

Alternatively, general-use automation like that provided by Ansible Automation Platform permits automation of anything, starting with a command line interface. Ansible also provides an enterprise framework for building and operating IT automation at scale. Users can centralize and control their infrastructure with a visual dashboard, role-based access control, and automation tools including analytics and certified, reusable content.

Ansible Automation Platform allows flexibility with your resources by automating provisioning for cloud providers, storage solutions, and infrastructure components. It helps make network management more consistent and expedites security patching and remediation.

Breaking Defense: What defines successful automation?

Lucente: Improved efficiency, lower costs, and faster delivery of services to begin with. That means a stronger security posture with repeatable processes and lower error rate. Successful projects always standardize the automation solution rather than attempt the job with a siloed, piecemeal approach.They also gain the ability to apply human resources across the organization as needed.

Easier acquisition of talent for popular well-known products is another way to define successful automation.

Breaking Defense: What are best practices for successful automation rollout?

Lucente: For leaders, be a champion! Set the vision with a mindset to support the team and push through roadblocks. Empower teams to embrace and own the solution.

Make sure to align to a business objective and measure success. If you dont measure it, you dont really care about it. Prioritize implementation within the organization and focus on outcomes rather than outputs. The DoD and other organizations dont care about the technology, per se, they care about the outcomes that improve mission execution.

Attach KPIs to your automation project, showing that this isnt just a new technology but one that is prioritized. If the metrics you outline are meaningful and realistic, youll prove your projects success beyond implementation.

Ive mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Support change and collaboration. Automation doesnt eliminate employees, it frees them from repetitive, mundane tasks and enables them to focus on strategic initiatives that add value.

However, this reality might not be immediately apparent. Recognize and address employee anxiety and concerns. Focus on the benefits theyll experience, including improved cross- enterprise collaboration to move projects forward faster.

Encourage adoption by investing in people; required skill sets, via training and temporary consultancy, enable early success and long-term change. As with the implementation of any technology, if people dont know how to use automation, it wont work. Making sure your workforce is trained and using the technology in the right way is critical to successful adoption.

Lastly, find a middle ground by aligning priorities between implementers and leadership. Then choose an automation platform that is neither proprietary nor domain-specific so that you can automate across all levels of your infrastructure.

Breaking Defense: What should organizations look for in an automation solution?

Lucente: I suggest these three things. Number One, invest in a platform, not a domain-specific tool. Avoid a solution that locks you in to specific IT infrastructure. Platforms are easier to adopt, support portable workloads, and can scale. The platform should provide a broad ecosystem of IT vendor support so that many common tasks are already defined and readily reusable.

Number Two, make sure the platform has management tooling that gives you visibility into workflows, credential and access management, reporting, and other important areas of situational awareness.

Number Three, select a vendor with comprehensive training, support, and consulting services.

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Best Practices For Network Automation - Breaking Defense Breaking Defense - Defense industry news, analysis and commentary - Breaking Defense