5 Benefits of Intent Based Networking That Help CIOs Manage...
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5 Benefits of Intent Based Networking That Help CIOs Manage Networks Efficiently

Network Infrastructure Magazine | Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Intent-based networking helps businesses manage network effortlessly by identifying the content. How is it going to benefit the companies?

FREMONT, CA: Intent-based networking (IBN) has become very crucial for the companies as the company networks are the core infrastructure for most of the business models. The concept of IBN has become a topic of discussion among IT professionals since last few months. It is a new approach to networking, where a special software has been created, which helps in designing, planning, and involuntarily implementing on the fly changes to the network, thus enhancing its availability and agility. This topic received a lot of attention in June 2017, when Cisco announced its IBN strategy known as The Network Intuitive. 

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IBN is a self-driving network that possesses the ability to automatically apply business intent to multiple network devices across a network without any dependency on the command-line interface (CLI). Instead, the intent is written in plain language or via a graphical interface by the network administrator. 

IBN can be achieved through orchestration and machine learning (ML). The combination of these two technologies builds a closed cycle that keeps on refreshing and applying the content.

There are multiple benefits that Intent-based networking (IBN) has to offer to business. Let’s dig into it.

1. IBN is vendor-agnostic: Traditional CL-based management needs network administrators to learn multiple shell languages for multiple vendors. It also needs them to learn numerous protocols for holding the network together to keep up with the change as new devices and protocols keep rolling out.

IBN eliminates this need for in-depth vendor knowledge as it has to deal with intent regardless of vendor or software package the company is dealing with. It does not matter whether the storage servers are virtual, bare metal, or a combination of the two, the process of adding a new account to the storage system with IBN remains the same.

2. IBN is more stable and secure: Being human, the chances of overlooking and making fact-errors are a lot when one changes the network configurations or update the firewall rules in the CLI. These errors cause security vulnerability and also break the network.

However, computers are more conscientious than humans in configuring to double-check their work or test it for finding mistakes.

Due to these reasons, IBN eliminates the chances of going wrong when one is changing the network. Training the hydra and preventing the emergence of new issues in the process of resolving the old ones is not a concern anymore.

3. IBN enables self-service: IBN, by offering the option of self-service, allows organizations to keep their clients happy and satisfied, simultaneously supporting them to keep their profit margins large. The clients can call the management software for their requirements and get the change done immediately.

Also, the HR no longer has to give their new workers access to the network as they can do themselves without any expertise. IBN enables the business’ clients to configure firewall settings for a video conference at multiple time zones at any time without any manual intervention. 

4. IBN is scalable: The traditional network management limits the ability to scale due to the size of the company’s staff. The growth will be slow and expensive if humans make the configurations essential to expand the network.

IBN enable the machines to handle all the tasks related to scaling up. Scalability gets a new meaning when the computer starts adding new devices to the network as well as managing the bandwidth and load-balancing settings in response to simple demands from humans that are intent-based.

5. IBN improves access control: Enabling certain users to have access to certain devices or resources in today’s complex network can be a tedious task in resolving firewall settings and access control lists.

This sort of manual approach becomes a huge challenge as one is dealing with thousands of users or even more, especially multiple credential management systems.

The IBN can easily perform the task by telling the management platform to block the access to the finance servers of a customer for everyone other than the finance department. The software can figure out on its own and make the necessary updates to the configurations and files automatically.

By reading the above benefits, it doesn’t mean that IBN completely eradicates the need for a service provider. Customers are always in need of a service that is not automated. However, IBN helps organizations in delivering the greatest value at less cost.

Check out: Top Networking Consulting Startups

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