DIY Data Center Automation Survey: Challenges/Opportunities for CSPs, Enterprises, & Cloud Providers

0:01 foreign

0:07 and thank you for attending today's webinar DIY data center automation we

0:13 die challenges and opportunities for csps Enterprises and class providers sponsored by Juniper before we begin I

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1:12 sent to you earlier today I would now like to turn the event over to live feelings contributing at the

1:18 Harry Sweeney Terry thanks Barbara and let me add my own

1:23 welcome to this DIY data center automation Deep dive Terry Sweeney here

1:29 and contributing editor with light reading and I will be moderating today's discussion

1:34 um to build or to buy that's been a question in Telecom and technology management for decades now

1:41 um whether you have 10 servers or or 10 000 the the landscape has changed with

1:46 the Advent of cloud computing virtualization Ai and machine learning

1:52 all of it is transformed Network management and made the question of buy versus build a lot more complicated

2:01 thankfully uh today's speakers gorkam unit of analysis Mason and Arun Gandhi

2:08 with Juniper Networks will really dig into this issue especially as it pertains to how much of your data center

2:13 operations you automate um today's webinar is also a departure from the usual presenter with a

2:21 PowerPoint setup that you may be accustomed to um gorkam and Arun will have more of a

2:26 conversation really about the findings of a recent study that Juniper commissioned an analysis Mason conducted

2:34 gorkam and his team talked a communication service providers cloud service providers and Enterprise

2:39 customers and the goal there was to peel back the layers of these different customer segments with regard to their

2:46 their thinking their planning and their spending where Automation in the data center is concerned

2:53 um but as Barbara mentioned we want to hear from you our attendees as well while gorkam and Arun chat uh please

3:00 send us your question using that q a box at the bottom of your screen which will address later in the program

3:07 so that's probably enough logistics for now um Arun Gandhi of juniper let's let's

3:12 start with you um talk to us why Juniper commissioned the study in the first place what what insights were you

3:18 looking for here thanks Terry and it's free to be on the panel with both you and gorkham and uh

3:24 to answer a question Terry as you know data center networking has become more

3:29 complex in the last few years and the added complexity needs to be managed the tools we've used before to manage them

3:37 no longer apply analysis Mason conducted an extensive survey for us last year and

3:43 that was focused on the ASP data center automation strategy and one of the key findings was that in-house automation

3:50 tooling is prevalent among organizations and most of them face cost and

3:55 scalability challenges with their custom DIY automation Tools in addition

4:01 in-house created automation requires developers and network Engineers to spend large amounts of time and efforts

4:09 building testing integrating custom DIY automation tools the maintenance and the

4:15 continuous development and Improvement of such tools can become more expensive over the life cycle

4:21 and and also last last service showed that uh csps with large numbers of

4:28 In-House DIY automation tools on average have higher cost spaces than their peers

4:35 that rely mainly on vendor automation Solutions so we kicked off this survey

4:40 project with analysis Mission once again to develop an understanding of In-House DIY automation data centers activities

4:48 the use cases and the pain points and this time we did it across all segments

4:54 so it's like a communication service providers Enterprises and Cloud providers

4:59 and the service survey results are very insightful and provide meaningful context to the mind of the data center

5:06 leader Kirkham let's let's turn to you now if we could um help us understand a bit

5:11 about how you went about collecting data for the the dentists that are study

5:16 itself what was your methodology here sure so we carried out an online survey

5:24 with a total of 96 organizations and these are made from three segments

5:30 you know including Enterprises cost service providers and Telecom operators and his own mentions um our objective

5:36 was to gain an in-depth understanding of the in-house DIY automation activities and reveal the main motivations use

5:44 cases and then the challenges behind them so we surveyed a large number of

5:50 Enterprises from a wide range of sizes and verticals you can see these on the

5:55 left hand side and the majority of these Enterprises they own between 25 to 50

6:01 data centers but even the smallest ones they have at least one or two our focus on the cloud service providers

6:09 was not on the major players such as AWS Google and Microsoft but rather the smaller scale more Regional type of

6:16 players providing cloud and data center services for the Telco operators these were

6:21 typically the large tier one operators with extensive mobile and fixed Network and data center assets

6:29 in addition to this online survey we also conducted deep dive interviews with senior decision makers from each of

6:35 these segments and you can also see on the right hand side that this was a global study with a

6:41 good balance between the Western and Eastern sides of the world and finally in terms of the titles and

6:48 responsibilities of the respondents we have a very balanced mix of senior

6:53 Executives who are in charge of their data center strategy and transformation of their organizations and also the

7:00 technical stuff from the production floor such as Network engineers and operations people who perform the

7:06 day-to-day operation activities in the data center so tremendous diversity among your

7:12 sample um not to mention like there's on on every continent from the

7:18 data center realm um stiving and with some of the the key

7:23 findings from the research um uh also curious about any similarities you may have seen among the

7:30 key drivers or the trends for data center strategies across these segments of course so one of the key findings

7:38 from our research is that the level of Automation in data center networks is very low across the board

7:44 and we were quite surprised by this because many of the companies we talked to stated that their data sentiment work

7:51 automation strategies are driven by ensuring customer experience security and business continuity and often

7:59 automating these network operations is one of the key pillars of their digital transformation strategy so despite this

8:05 strategic importance of data center Network or automation companies are struggling to make progress in it

8:12 and the main problem they are facing is that they find difficult to achieve reliable and repeatable Automation in a

8:18 cost efficient manner as part of this research we had a deep dive into how companies are building

8:24 Automation in their DC networks and we found that the majority of the DC

8:29 network operations today rely on a fragmented set of In-House Fields DIY tools and solutions

8:36 this indicates that the current DIY base approach DC Network automation is not

8:41 delivering the results companies desire and there's a strong and urgent need for rethinking these DIY automation

8:48 strategies so if you zoom in on the level of

8:53 automation achieved today we see some differences between the operational areas and also the type of segments so

9:01 we asked companies uh to assess their automation levels across key operational processes including phase zero planning

9:08 and design they want deployment and configuration and data and plus zombie operations such as monitoring

9:15 troubleshooting and so on we see that the companies the more progress has been

9:21 made in day two operations which are often a priority for companies because they too has a direct impact on customer

9:28 experience and company's reputation so think about the outages and slas

9:34 so this is an importance area but if you look at the overall automation levels it is still low

9:40 and there are several challenges um causing this and and we'll Circle back to that we found that day Zero

9:46 automation is lowest and many companies in our research reported that they're finding the data center design processes

9:53 highly challenging and difficult to alternate when looking at the segments Cloud

9:58 providers are the most automated among all three and this is expected because they need automated data centers and

10:05 operations to stay competitive however compared to the levels of automation we

10:10 see in major public Cloud companies these providers seem to be lagging behind and this could be a major risk to

10:16 their business Enterprises on the other hand are a mixed bag but we identified mainly two

10:24 types some Enterprises mainly see their data centers as cost centers and they tend to

10:30 limit Investments and usually outsourced operations to third parties but there's also other type of

10:36 Enterprises who consider their data centers as strategic assets and key part

10:42 of their business and digital Journeys so this attitude and focus makes a big

10:47 difference in the automation Investments and those that place more strategic importance on their data centers also

10:53 make more progress in DC Network automation and finally the Telecom operators

10:59 achieve the lowest level of Automation in all areas last year as I mentioned we

11:04 collaborated um on another research that focused on state of operators DC Automation and the

11:10 key finding was that operators are struggling a lot with technology and operational silos and complexity in

11:17 their data centers and this is hindering their ability to automate and now we see

11:22 that there's considerable gap between operators and other digital companies in terms of Automation and this might have

11:29 major implications to their 5G and Edge service ambitions gorkam I think would

11:35 be helpful if you could talk about some of the main challenges that are contributing to the low levels of

11:40 Automation in data center networks absolutely so our survey showed it um

11:48 there are three common pain points I mean DC networks today uh first is the

11:53 multi-vendor support and integration especially in Telecom operators and also in a large size Enterprises and to some

12:01 extent Cloud providers as well um this is a major challenge these companies often have to use multiple

12:07 vendor proprietary management and automation Solutions and most often they use it in addition to their in-house

12:14 Chrome DIY tools and all these disparate systems result in high operational complexity and

12:21 presents a significant challenge for automation and this gets even worse for operators

12:27 and Cloud providers that provide managed hosting services in which they operate customer networks and each of these

12:34 networks come with a different set of vendor technology environments so overall this is the top barrier and

12:40 the pain points are for automation the other pain points are actually interrelated the many companies believe

12:47 that the automation tools that are available in the markets are not adequate for their automation needs so

12:54 they decide to build their own automation tools and solutions as I mentioned before

13:00 um there's huge amount of DIY activities going on in data centers but then companies also struggle with the costs

13:06 and resource limitations of creating and maintaining these diagrams so there's a serious concern about TCO

13:13 and Roi of In-House field Solutions and we're going to talk about it later and

13:18 there's another aspect to consider here and this regards to you know the inadequate tooling because we know that

13:25 many Enterprises adopt Technology Solutions but they can't make the most out of them because they don't have a

13:30 skilled personal and the right operational processes in place so even though vendor automation Solutions come

13:37 with many features and functionalities a lot of them are underutilized or not utilized at all so it's not always about

13:44 the technology but how these Technologies are used and the processes are designed around them thanks cork I'm

13:51 Arun turning back to you um based on Juniper's experience with

13:56 customers um what part of the data center life cycle are organizations prioritizing for

14:02 automation what are you hearing there uh that's a great question Teddy uh now

14:09 if you talk to Data Center buyers overwhelmingly overwhelmingly they care about two things one is the Automation

14:16 and the other is security and you see the industry has changed but the past was defined by architecture which boxes

14:23 do you deploy and where what protocols to use to connect them the future is defined by operations and we aren't

14:31 scaling bandwidth so much as we are scaling up operations so and let me point out that uh the

14:38 entire industry has made automation a focus for at least last 15 years but

14:43 despite the millions of hours collectively it poured into the this Pursuit most operations outside of the

14:51 large Cloud Pro properties are still manual and I think God can uh alluded to those if you are generous maybe you'll

14:58 acknowledge how hard it is and if you are more cynical maybe you will side with devops Borat when he says to make

15:04 error is human to propagate the error to all servers in an automatic way is devops

15:11 and it's not just Borat breaking things and networks is almost lower at this

15:16 point ask your customers how comfortable they are pushing to production on Friday

15:22 so whether it's a supply chain issues or the great resignation or any other half a dozen or so Dynamics playing across

15:29 the industry the fact of the matter is the old way of doing things is dying the

15:35 trends towards automation is important but it is now about developing familiarity with the new host of methods

15:42 more conducive to automated operations gorkam turning back to you for a moment

15:49 um let's let's dig in a little bit more around um the the extent of data center

15:55 automation particularly with regard to this whole build versus by question that

16:00 we began with can you talk about some of the key drivers for organizations here

16:07 sure um so yes I mean the DIY automation is is highly prevalence and you can't see

16:13 you know some numbers here and this you know it's pretty much applies to all segments we surveyed the DIY is the main

16:21 approach and they're using to their DC Network automation and um we are seeing that these DIY

16:27 activities they use a broad range of Technologies for instance um software

16:33 automation platforms created by you know in-house you know the devops teams is pretty common and these are not just you

16:40 know the few lines of codes but they are like proper software systems with um you know many functions and and the features

16:46 and these platforms are typically developed and maintained by sizable amount of developer resources you know

16:53 and also with the support from skilled engineers and operation stuff and there's also a lot of Open Source

17:00 tools based DIY automation for example scripting tools such as ansible and agent-based solutions and

17:07 these are widely adopters and used by Network engineers and operations teams to automate their day-to-day tasks

17:14 but these are typically used in a firefighting mode as opposed to a consistent automation approach so many

17:21 of these are developed in an ad hoc basis so you can consider them pretty much as Band-Aids after Band-Aids to

17:27 resolve specific problems and a traditional method of you know the CLI and the shaft scripts are still

17:34 quite common and as we've seen you know of the DC network operations are highly manual so many companies are relying on

17:40 this fat finger error from approaches to manage their DC Networks and if you look at what is driving these

17:47 companies um to DIY automation the top driver is the ability to create tailored

17:54 automation for their specific operational needs and this is particularly true for cloud service

17:59 providers because they believe that they keep their technological Edge and the competitive differentiation through DIY

18:06 Solutions also the telcros they allow customization but oftentimes they regret

18:11 it because it just leads to another snowflake environment among many others they already have

18:17 and another top driver is is cost savings but here what they actually mean

18:22 is capex sales the companies we interview during our research highlighted that they find out of the

18:28 box Solutions usually expensive and they need more cost efficient and flexible commercial models such as space super

18:34 pairs to go and as the service models however as and we are going to talk about it later but this short-term capex

18:41 savings are actually offset by the Optics so there's a big question mark whether this DIY can really save money

18:49 and finally um a major challenge that we are seeing in

18:54 the DC networks is the multi-lander complexity and a lot of the companies are are having difficulties with that

19:01 and they're trying to solve these multimanded issues through the ioi automation so

19:07 and when we look at the challenges associated with DIY automation lack of

19:12 resource and skill availability and the dependency is on a small set of people who build these automations are the top

19:18 two pain points because the initial development of DIY tools and solutions is just the tip of

19:25 the iceberg it also takes large amount of valuable resources to manage the life cycle of these tools this includes

19:31 testing integration maintenance improvements security so these are all highly time and resource consuming

19:38 activities and then they face a turnover problem when people who build this code and have

19:44 a deep knowledge of these ad hoc tools and systems when they leave the organization it becomes a trouble

19:50 and on top of that there's the skill shortage um the CTO of an insurance company we

19:56 talked as part of this research told us that they're having difficulty finding skilled individuals who possess both

20:02 knowledge of managing data center networks and the ability to code for automation so the issue is not solely

20:09 that they are expensive but also that they are difficult to find and hire and the final challenge is is the ROI

20:15 and the cost of ownership and this is no surprise so if you will not we just discussed about amount of resources it

20:22 takes to develop the eye by Automation and also keep it functioning so there's actually a large amount of Opex involved

20:27 in the DIY automation and most often companies Overlook these costs or simply they are just not fully aware of them

20:34 because a lot of these costs are hidden and fly under the radar of senior Executives and the decision makers

20:42 thanks corkum I um I think it's safe to say that most of our listeners if not all are are interested in the actual

20:49 costs of DIY automation um can you give us an estimate of the

20:55 effort and resources required if you were to in fact build this yourself

21:02 of course so we analyzed two distinct groups of companies in our survey sample

21:08 the first group that consists of those that heavily rely on DIY automation with

21:14 minimum use of vendor Solutions and we call them DIY automation Reliance and

21:19 there are like 11 of them and there's another set of companies that rely more on the third-party vendor

21:25 automation Solutions than the average but they still use DIY to a lesser extent and we call them third party

21:32 leaning and they're like 10 companies in school so the first thing that jumped out of this analysis was that there is no

21:39 significant difference between these groups in terms of their level of automation so their DC network operations are pretty much automated in

21:46 the same amount however when we look at the level of effort and resources providing DIY

21:52 Reliance companies we see the true cost of DIY automation as this slide shows

21:57 DIY Reliant companies are dedicating a good chunk of their data center budgets to these activities and it includes the

22:04 head count so there's bigger effects right there and their Network Engineers are also

22:10 um facing a heavy burden by these DIY activities because the majority of the diyers they said that level of effort by

22:18 the network Engineers is very high and we see the evidence of this here most diyers actually they more than half

22:25 of their Network engineers and operations staff they write their own automation scripts in addition to their

22:31 you know daily tasks and almost every day they are creating and updating these scripts so this actually you know begs

22:38 the question is it really automation if you need to manage it every day or every week so if you look at the left hand

22:44 side the companies that have a better balance between the third-party Solutions and the DIY can achieve a

22:50 similar level of automation but without putting all these you know the substantial amount of In-House resources

22:56 so this clearly shows that a DIY heavy approach to automation is inefficient

23:01 and puts a lot of burden on skilled resources and doesn't deliver a strong Roi

23:07 everyone Let's uh let's turn back to you then um what is uh Juniper's reaction to

23:13 hearing this information um any any surprises uh among the findings that gorkam has just reported

23:20 uh thanks Teddy first of all I want to thank gorkam and the team for the great work absolutely incredible uh second as

23:28 we talk to our customers worldwide it is very clear that operational complexity

23:33 is driving up the data center Network cost and automation is needed to reduce this complexity lower the cost and

23:40 improve customer experience and the staff productivity and uh DIY automations have significant

23:47 hidden internal costs and cannot support a rich set of functionalities and scale

23:52 I think God can alluded to it in his uh research data as he presented and as I remarked earlier and you've

23:58 seen the results are very insightful and reassuring that our abstract can solve

24:03 many of the challenges that these automation DIYs have and just to remind

24:09 our viewers abstra is a multi-vendor intent base platform with Rich features

24:14 in Telemetry it abstracts uh control so we can manage a flick of devices from a

24:20 single point of control in a nutshell abstract makes it really hard to make mistakes

24:26 with data centers being decidedly multi-vendor and oriented around software defined operations

24:32 we do understand the challenges in managing them efficiently and this research affirms it across all segments

24:40 because I'm turning then back to you what sorts of recommendations do you have then for accelerating data center

24:48 Network automation it's done your research and the data that emerged yeah

24:53 absolutely so I would say first of all what this research shows that the level of PC

25:00 Network automation is really low despite the fact that it is business critical and has an impact on services customer

25:07 experience and company's reputation so there's an urgent need to take action especially the ctOS and the cios they

25:15 need they need to step up and prioritize investments in this area a best practice I heard are from a fair

25:22 automated organization was that they developed a multi-year roadmap to

25:27 specifically address on the DC Network Automation and they tied their senior

25:32 managers kpis and the bonuses to their automation objectives so this is a really good way to drive an

25:38 organization-wide automation initiative and this can be adopted by others too

25:43 the second not all DIY automation is bad in fact having in-house software

25:49 development and automation capabilities is a key part of becoming a digital company however our research shows that the

25:56 companies rely too heavily on DIY for their DC Network Automation and this is

26:02 not an efficient way to achieve their automation goals I recommend that companies rethink their DIY strategies

26:08 to strike the life balance so they need to examine their current processes and automation activities to reveal their

26:15 true cost of DIY and think about switching to a third-party vendor out-of-the-box Solutions wherever it

26:22 makes financial and operational sense and finally this means that they need to

26:27 identify and adopt the right vendor Solutions and based on the key pain points we found on DC Network automation

26:35 today there are some essential capabilities including their vendor checks firstly companies should look for

26:42 a truly multivendor automation platform because many companies struggle with operational complexity of multilander

26:48 environments seconds they need reliable and repeatable automation which means

26:54 that they shouldn't have to allocate large amount of resources and worry about people leaving the organization

27:00 one way to achieve this is having industry standards best practice automation templates for design day one

27:06 and day two activities so that they're not building snowflake automations but instead something that can be easily

27:12 replicated and extended across data centers and operations and finally of course they have to

27:19 consider the ROI and this should be based on a holistic analysis that not only includes the short-term capex but

27:26 also the long-term effects associated with the DIY automation activities Arun tell us how viewers can access this

27:33 research uh Teddy the report is available on

27:38 Juniper's site www.junippa.net and reports for each segment are going

27:46 to be there so for csps the Enterprise and the cloud providers we will also be

27:51 sharing the links with all our viewers after the webinar along with the recording of the webinar and you can

27:57 also reach out to your account team Juniper accounting and Juniper spot uh for to get this report uh you know in

28:04 your hands foreign

28:14 terrific context setting for the the very timely topic of the DIY Data Center

28:20 and automation um your conversation has sparked lots of questions from viewers uh before we go

28:26 there uh I just want to underscore what Arun just mentioned with regard to the

28:31 follow-up email for this webinar event that will allow you to view this webinar

28:38 again pass it on to colleagues they'll also be an evaluation form in there we appreciate your feedback uh this email

28:46 will also contain links to the the study being discussed here in today's session

28:52 so uh as a reminder to uh our our viewers and listeners uh typed your

28:58 questions into that q a box we'll get to as many of your questions as the time

29:04 allows um Arun there's a great question here from the audience with regard to uh

29:11 definitions and and scope of automation uh you you got into this a bit uh during

29:17 your your comments but um Talk a bit more about whether this includes is it just the network only

29:23 does it also extend to servers storage apps basically everything from bare

29:29 metal to Virtual Network functions how are you defining that

29:36 but very great question um actually um so how we Define is uh managing

29:42 automation the automating the entire data center which includes your uh your your switches your servers and all the

29:49 boxes and uh and certainly we're looking at the basically automation from the

29:56 operational point of view as I described in the in the uh earlier and I think also uh uh gorkam has wanted to share

30:03 some thoughts on this as well based on the research you got them you want to add something to it please

30:10 I mean I think yeah you you nailed it it's um when we talked to and also for the online survey uh we Define you know

30:17 the data center networks you know all the switches routers um firewalls and you know there's all

30:23 sorts of you know other um F4 and seven applications to the data center and of course I mean data center

30:29 networks are not isolated right all the servers storage applications they drive

30:34 you know a lot of um you know Automation and requirements on the data centers so yes basically uh

30:41 for the whole Space um we talked to in our conversations yeah

30:48 okay thanks gentlemen um another question from the audience um Arun I think this one is for you can

30:53 appstress support single fabric multi-vendor say a fabric with switches from vendor a and vendor B

31:02 uh yes uh the short answer is yes apps for certainly support abstra is I know

31:08 the uh the only multi vendors uh Network management solution available today uh

31:14 to manage your data center networks and it is multi vendor so you can actually uh from a single control point you can

31:21 manage your Juniper devices Cisco Arista and your uh you know the Sonic boxes as

31:27 well so so again yes it is and it was built ground up you know multi vendor

31:33 was has been a strategy from uh day one and we still continue to believe in and

31:38 we still continue to go forward with uh having this uh having multi-wind as part

31:44 of our key uh you know proposition for for data center Network management

31:52 gorkam I I was curious if you might be willing to unpack a bit some of the key

31:57 use cases for DIY automation for cloud service providers uh Communication

32:03 service providers and and Enterprises you you alluded to this a bit in your your presentation but um Talk a bit more

32:10 about some of the key use cases if you would yeah of course that there are some major differences

32:17 between these segments in terms of their DIY automation use cases if you start

32:23 from the communication service providers csps so their DIY tooling is mainly

32:29 driven by a multi-vendor network operations because they have highly fragmented Network equipments management

32:36 tools and and the data models so they need a common layer on top of these to

32:42 abstract you know this underlying complexity and most often these DIY tools are built for um like monitoring

32:49 service intelligence and and the configuration of these multi-mender environments

32:55 and in addition csps do a lot of DIY developments for the integration of

33:00 these multi-vendor devices to the other parts of their Automation and management systems such as like Network

33:06 orchestrators in their Telco clouds but we also discovered that advanced csps

33:12 they start to look at Automation in a more multi-domain way meaning that they

33:17 are considering more converged automation for their data centers when

33:22 and and the rest of their 5G and fixed networks but so this is still in the early days but there's definitely a

33:28 growing interest in this area cloud service providers on the other hand they're highly DIY driven

33:35 organizations and they pretty much build everything in-house it's just their model software

33:40 and buy so they traditionally have a limited use of vendor tools and they are utilizing all sorts of In-House and open

33:47 sources across you know their operations from provisioning to monitoring so there's no specific use case for them

33:53 you know for the DIY automation it's just a DIY is their primary way to build automation

33:58 Enterprises so the ones we surveyed in this research showed many similarities

34:04 to Cloud providers in terms of their approach to you know the DIY Automation and the DIY tools are widespread across

34:12 you know all key operational processes but of course there are some differences based on the type of Enterprises and

34:20 also their level of you know technical skills and technology advancements for instance some Advanced Enterprises

34:26 they're now building automation to tightly integrate their DC networking resources to their devops and CI CD

34:33 processes so that the developers and the product owners they can consume these resources on demand

34:39 we also heard um some of the Enterprises are going through on the cloud repatriation they

34:46 are migrating some of their workloads back to their data centers so they are rebuilding automation for these

34:52 applications and services and finally I would just add um especially in the highly regulated

34:57 verticals you know such as financial services and Healthcare there's a lot of

35:03 security and and compliance through and automation use cases we resoldering our research

35:10 in the conversations that you and your team had with these these various

35:15 customer segments um what changes could they would would they

35:20 make in retrospect or if they had to do it all over again what changes might they make to their in-house tooling

35:28 um what were some of the the common things that that you heard from the the survey respondents yeah so it's a great

35:35 question um one of the most important findings from our research that's almost no one

35:42 is fully content uh with their DIY automations and they would all go back and do things differently so this is

35:48 actually quite interesting um and when we look at you know the most automated csps and Enterprises they

35:56 generally said that you know they would use uh third-party vendor Solutions you know instead of like rewriting their DIY

36:02 tools and mind you that you know these are the ones that's been longer on the automation journey and they experience

36:09 you know all sorts of challenges and limitations of DIY automation so now they're realizing that in a lot of areas

36:15 actually they would be better off with an out of the box solution um similarly some of the least automated

36:22 Enterprises and cloud service providers they're also saying that in retrospect and they would use the you know the

36:28 right vendor Solutions instead of DIY because they started to acknowledge that

36:34 you know it is very difficult for them to get the skill sets and also you know enough resources to do it by themselves

36:39 so there's definitely a growing interest and demand uh from these type of

36:44 organizations for out of the box automation however um one thing I need to mention also you

36:51 know when we look at the most automated cloud service providers um they're a little bit different most

36:57 of them they are thinking about changing their approach you know to building their tools for instance and they're

37:03 thinking about dedicating more developer resources or maybe getting help from you know external partners and such as

37:09 Outsourcing so they will still continue to do automation in-house as much as

37:15 possible but I would say that you know best way forward for them actually really you know focusing on what you do

37:22 best you know to achieve competitive differentiation so concentrate you know all the DIY on the Strategic areas but

37:29 you should offload the rest of vendor Solutions because there's no need to you know to reinvent the wheel and you know

37:35 there are some solid Solutions in the markets that could do the same at the same level if not better than you know

37:41 the DIY tools and it would be probably you know in a much more efficient way to do things

37:47 thanks for that um I I think would be remiss if we didn't address uh the uh the the key

37:53 market trends of cloud and and 5G cellular on data center automation

37:59 um gorkam what's your take I've got a few ideas but um I'm just curious what you see is the the impact of of cloud

38:06 and and 5G on automation okay I'll I'll start um so definitely I mean cloud and 5G

38:14 they are the biggest Trends I mean driving the data center and also the automation um strategies today

38:21 um let's start with clouds um because you know the main Enterprises and and also the csps they're moving their

38:27 workloads to public clouds and also to SAS and in most cases um they're using you know multiple Cloud

38:34 providers however of course this doesn't mean that you know if they're giving up on their data centers and and their

38:39 private clouds um especially you know many Mission critical services and applications

38:45 um they're still running on-prem so overall this really means that you know they're operating in a increasingly

38:51 hybrids and multi-cloud environments and their networking and and automation needs are getting more and more complex

38:58 and this means that um they are facing new requirements and also challenges and all these are

39:04 basically you know redefining the way um they are doing Network automation and also they're thinking about how they are

39:10 securing these hybrid environments and and how they're ensuring service reliability customer experience and slas

39:17 so all of these are now you know in retails uh with cloud and in csps

39:24 cloud and 5G you know it pretty much goes hand in hand because 5G is designed to be Cloud native so there are you know

39:31 the major Cloud Transformations going on and Cloud native 5G networks age and

39:37 advanced Enterprise Services they will be all deployed and run you know across many centralized and distributed data

39:44 centers so csps needs you know highly automated and agile data center network

39:49 operations otherwise they won't be able to realize they are you know 5G Edge and iot service Ambitions in the past you

39:56 know the csps they often overlooked you know their data centers but now they

40:02 started to realize that you know actually their data centers are very critical to their business and Automation in the data centers is is

40:08 quick moving up in their agenda by the way you know of course I mean 5G and Edge is not only a key driver for csps

40:15 but also for you know wide range of Enterprise verticals you know think about manufacturing automotive oil and

40:22 gas and even in retail right so they're looking to drive more Automation and better customer experience using the 5G

40:30 on private networks and Edge so again all this infrastructure it relies on

40:36 their data center networks so automation office DC networks is an essential element you know of their digital

40:42 transformation I'm not sure if you have anything more to add on this well this isn't going to be much of a

40:48 debate I'm in violent agreement with just about everything you said um it's it's clear that that

40:55 um Cloud obviously is a bit more mature than 5G um but it's it's also clear that both of

41:01 these Technologies are bringing Untold about some bandwidth in in places

41:07 we couldn't get them before not to mention performance and flexibility

41:13 um but um also the the complexity that it also begins to introduce uh this this

41:19 is going to completely outstrip um humans own uh individual ability to

41:25 to manage the the amount of of log data and just to to keep current much less uh

41:33 keep things secure and operational so um it seems as if uh that they will

41:40 hasten actually the the the adoption of of automation it it seems impossible that they can get to the next levels of

41:47 of networking and service and and the customer experience that they that they

41:53 all want to get to without something more sophisticated than the tools they they currently rely

41:59 on so um let's see um we have another question from the

42:06 audience uh gorkam I'd like you to start on this one if you could um

42:11 what's your position on the evolution to to net Ops um the the network operations

42:16 uh equivalent to to devops uh using an open ecosystem of tooling

42:24 um the the questioner says that this doesn't exclude vendor-specific

42:29 Solutions but there is a scope boundary what the vendor platforms are supposed to do I EG not CI CD in a box

42:38 um what's what's your take on on netops is is is that something

42:43 um we can expect or should expect uh definitely this is an excellent

42:49 question and we are definitely seeing its run towards on the netsops and

42:54 and I I agree with that so um it's it has to be you know the open

42:59 source DIY along with the multimander tools right so you can't really argue

43:04 that you know you can just go with one way and don't think about other because as I mentioned earlier when I was

43:11 talking about recommendations it's really their key capability for any

43:16 digital um organization to have those in-house software skills and these are

43:22 often enriched with you know the open source and and the devops kind of tools so and also the best practices that we

43:29 are seeing for example from you know some of the most automated cloud service providers and Enterprises they basically

43:36 complement you know the vendor tools and solutions with open source and also you

43:41 know from their own developments and their own in which route of these open source tools so the ideal way to do it

43:47 is really you know create your um devops cicd pipelines and the chains your

43:53 workflows only integrated you know with this you know um complementary tools and solutions

44:00 because that's really you need to get the best out of you know the each all right so there's no need to just exclude

44:06 one and go with others so definitely um that's kind of thinking that you know we are hearing from the most advanced and

44:13 organizations okay Arun turning back to you

44:19 um it was curious uh Once Upon a Time abstra was only supporting uh EVP and

44:26 vxlan reference designs is this still the case uh good question Teddy this is a

44:34 question we often hear from folks who've seen abstra before so uh earlier let me

44:40 say you know maybe a year back or before but with uh 4.1.1 release in September

44:48 of last year abstra now supports free from reference design and with free form

44:55 customers can build Hub and Spock Ring full mesh and other topologies

45:00 leveraging any future protocol or architecture that fits the deployment scenario and now the network designer is

45:09 responsible for creating and validating all device configurations and as with other reference designs

45:15 freeform still leverages the context graph intent based analytics

45:21 configuration validation Loss Management time Voyager and other

45:26 numerous apps for software features

45:33 that's great thanks thank you for that um corkum turning back to you um just wondering with the research that you

45:41 conducted which segment do you think is most motivated about automating their data centers and I'm just curious why

45:48 you think that is I I I don't think there's one particular

45:55 segment that is you know the most motivated because for all segments you know data science

46:00 Network automation is is critical you know I just um about you know all the 5G

46:06 and Edge you know if I'm all the industrial now 4.0 use cases this is all you know very much reliant on on data

46:13 center automation maybe maybe cloud service providers and they're slightly more motivated because

46:19 at the end of the day you know data centers are their main business but we've seen you know some Enterprises and

46:26 csps that are as as motivated as this class service providers so it really

46:32 comes down you know to the individual organizations uh Within These segments how they think about Automation and to

46:39 what extent it is you know Incorporated in their strategy because I mean they're all facing a range of technical

46:45 challenges you know we discuss them today but a common characteristic you know in the ones that we could say more

46:52 motivated or or committed are those the one that you know putting also you know the organizational and operational

46:58 changes because you know it's not just about technology it's it's a it's a full

47:03 transformation so those more motivated ones um they are already putting they're

47:09 already devising you know long-term plans and road maps um they're getting support and

47:14 sponsorships from their cto's and cios um they're thinking about you know how

47:19 automation is going to redefine um the staff responsibilities and job descriptions and how they are going to

47:26 you know to allocate these resources you know to more strategic areas so it is you know I guess

47:32 um it is it really calms down uh you know to The Specific Enterprise and they're you know unique thinking but you

47:39 know there are some common characteristics you know in when we look at this you know bunch of um organizations that are more motivated

47:46 and more committed so this this is not a you know coincidence it really shows maturity in their thinking

47:52 sure um this this feels like a great place to to

47:57 also address um The Internet of Things um we were speaking about uh cloud and

48:04 and 5G just a few minutes ago um the the predicted explosion of of in

48:11 devices that will be uh made network accessible everything from thermostats

48:16 to light switches to every every operational technology piece

48:23 out there seems also poised to add to both the the the complexity and and the required

48:30 bandwidth for particularly Enterprise needs and um

48:35 gorkel I'm curious if you see this uh also uh becoming an issue for a

48:41 communication service providers but it's it's abundantly clear that um automation

48:47 will be absolutely essential for managing um what's exponential growth and and the

48:54 the whole iot sector of of the industry what are your thoughts there absolutely

49:01 I mean the the sheer complexity of all the networks on the services it's just

49:06 becoming impossible to do it in a manual way I mean you know if you want to also you know as an operator or as a service

49:12 provider if you want to you know deliver these Services um in a cost efficient way in a

49:18 competitive way and also you know a lot of people are you know asking for on-demand and Digital customer experience so automation it's not um you

49:27 know something nice to have but it's it's an imperative without that you can't really deliver these services in

49:33 the way that you know they're supposed to be definitely we had an audience member who's uh

49:39 following up on the the netapps uh threat that we've been on uh during the

49:44 Q a session um this uh this questioner is asking what you see as some of the main tools

49:50 that would fall under the the net Ops Banner um they're citing existing tools like

49:56 ansible puppet python toolkits or or something else um yeah

50:02 and how maybe netops May differ from devops with regard to tooling do you

50:08 have any thoughts there yeah yeah um yeah definitely so um for I mean when we look at what's

50:15 going on in data centers and the networks team they typically use um so

50:20 scripting using for like for example on ansible playbooks are are very common so

50:26 that's definitely a lot of network Engineers there using that and also the python um you know the how they base the

50:34 codes in the networks they seems like you know the de facto on the programming language the agent based tools

50:41 um server and storage people they tend to rely more on Chef and puppets but one

50:46 of the interesting things that we found um one of the data center operations

50:52 manager we thought to be we interviewed he said that initially you know they all started with this you know different

50:58 tool sets and everyone of us specialize on one thing but some something that they start to notice is that they

51:04 started to exchange you know these these tools and also their their knowledge you know their know-how so you know now that

51:11 networks people they are starting to use you know a potent Chef even though maybe it was more server and storage people

51:17 kind of thing but it is you know uh spreading into other areas and also uh I

51:22 I alluded this earlier um a lot of you know the networking resources and you know the devops people

51:29 and um and the product um owners they want to consume this networking resources as a service um you

51:36 know on demand so they have to you know integrate with the you know the broader devops and the CI CD pipeline

51:44 environment so it is converging um definitely so maybe you know the networks people use more ansible and

51:50 fights a little bit more but um other tools are increasingly becoming adopted than animals too

51:56 thanks for that um Arun in the in the just a few minutes

52:01 that we have left um you're in regular contact with with customers across all of these segments

52:07 that we've been talking about in the last hour what types of data center operators and and data center networks

52:13 do you think are are the best targets for the abstra solution

52:19 Great Commission there so um abstra it's just a general you know thumb rule is

52:25 abstract can be used across all data centers Enterprise Telco Edge data

52:31 centers a multi-tenant or co-location and hyperscale so scalability is really

52:37 an important consideration when you talk about the the platform or the tool and uh from the ground up it apps was

52:45 designed for scale I mean I've our first customer for example Yahoo Japan uh with

52:52 its initial release they actually deployed abstra across the data centers with hundreds of switches now of course

52:58 thousands and in some cases tens of thousands we build the architecture from the beginning to fit the largest data

53:05 centers so that we can scale with the customer as they grow the deployments and uh since when we talk about scale it

53:12 has two directions right so on the other side the smallest deployment that we can support with abstra is what we call the

53:20 collapse spine and which is essentially uh one spine connected to two leaves so

53:26 um in the nutshell the operational model scales with the size of the data center which is one of the key design goals of

53:33 abstract well unfortunately that is all the time

53:40 we have left for questions today um my sincerest thanks to both gorkam

53:45 yet with analysis Mason and Arun Gandhi of juniper Network's Light reading

53:50 appreciates your time and expertise on data center Automation and the smartest ways to handle that transition yourself

54:00 uh thanks to our sponsor as well Juniper Networks as well as to everyone in today's audience we appreciate you

54:06 joining us for this light reading webinar DIY data center automation Deep

54:11 dive thanks for your attention and participation we'll see you next time