Agentic NetOps: The Right Direction, and the Real Work Ahead
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NetBrain Named Representative Vendor in the Gartner® 2025 Market Guide for Network Automation Platforms
The latest Gartner® Market Guide for Network Automation Platforms makes it clear: network automation is no longer optional, but the real challenge is turning research findings into operational reality. While the numbers are stark—“67% of enterprise networking activities are performed manually. The outcomes for these are poor incident and change performance,”—the path forward is about more than just buying a platform.Here’s what network leaders need to know to move from theory to impactful automation.
Why Most Automation Efforts Stall
Enterprises today often run three or more automation tools, but these are rarely integrated. This “tool sprawl” creates silos, where automation is limited to isolated tasks or domains. The result? Inconsistent outcomes, increased risk, and a network that can’t keep pace with business demands.
More Tools = Higher Chance of Failure
The Gartner report highlights that and “by the end of 2028, over 80% of all comprehensive network automation initiatives will have been shelved due to persistent skills scarcity and inadequate funding, up from less than 10% in 2024.” Smaller network teams, in particular, face limited platform choices, as most solutions cater to large-scale environments.
What Actually Works: Lessons from the Field
- Unify Your Approach—Don’t Just Add More Tools
Instead of piling on new scripts or point solutions, focus on platforms that orchestrate workflows across your entire network. The best platforms offer:
- End-to-end automation across multiple vendors and domains
- Low-code or no-code workflow design to empower non-developers
- Integration with ITSM, monitoring, and cloud platforms
- Expand Your Automation Scope
Don’t restrict automation to provisioning or configuration. The most successful teams automate:
- Change management
- Incident response
- Compliance checks
- Vulnerability management
- Build a Network Source of Truth
“By 2028, over 30% of enterprises will maintain a real-time network source of truth (NSoT), up from less than 5% today.” This dynamic inventory and topology map is essential for reliable automation, compliance, and troubleshooting.
- Invest in Skills and Simplicity
Skills scarcity is the top reason automation projects fail. Choose platforms with intuitive UIs and invest in upskilling your team in workflow automation and integration. Start with pilot projects and expand as your team builds confidence and expertise.
Practical Steps to Get Started—See Your Data in NetBrain
- Pilot with Real Use Cases:
Start automation with high-impact, repetitive tasks like configuration backups, compliance checks, or automated diagnostics.
How NetBrain Helps: NetBrain enables you to quickly automate these tasks across multi-vendor, multi-domain environments. Its visual, low-code/no-code workflow runbooks let you build and deploy automation for configuration backups, compliance validation, and diagnostics—without requiring programming expertise. NetBrain’s platform supports automated configuration archiving, compliance reporting, and dynamic diagnostics, ensuring these critical workflows are robust and repeatable. - Integrate, Don’t Isolate:
Connect your automation platform to ITSM, monitoring, and cloud tools for seamless workflows.
How NetBrain Helps: NetBrain offers extensive integration capabilities, including a published RESTful API and turnkey connectors for ITSM platforms like ServiceNow, as well as monitoring and cloud management tools. This allows you to trigger NetBrain automation workflows directly from incident tickets or monitoring alerts, ensuring your network automation is part of a unified IT operations ecosystem. - Prioritize Simplicity:
Select platforms with low-code/no-code options and clear, centralized management to lower the barrier to adoption.
How NetBrain Helps: NetBrain’s intuitive, Golden Engineering Studio makes network discovery and automation creation a breeze. NetBrain’s intuitive visual workflow designer, centralized management dashboard, and embedded AI-driven diagnostics empower network engineers of all skill levels. The platform’s AI features help automatically identify root causes, suggest remediation steps, and streamline complex troubleshooting—making automation smarter and more accessible. - Measure and Iterate:
Track results, gather feedback, and expand automation as you demonstrate success.
NetBrain offers automated network assessments that map your entire environment, inventory devices, and analyze configurations for compliance and vulnerabilities. These assessments provide a real-time “source of truth” (NSoT), highlighting gaps, risks, and automation opportunities. With this baseline, you can prioritize automation projects that deliver the fastest ROI and address your most pressing needs.
By leveraging NetBrain’s advanced automation, integration, and management capabilities, you can turn Gartner’s strategic guidance into practical, scalable results—accelerating your journey from manual operations to a fully automated network.
- Customizable Automation Workflows
- Visual, Low-Code/No-Code Designer: NetBrain allows users to build, modify, and extend automation workflows visually—no advanced coding required. This means teams can tailor automation to their unique processes, compliance needs, and network environments.
- Reusable Templates: You can create, clone, and customize configuration templates for gold/standard builds, compliance checks, or troubleshooting routines, adapting them to your organization’s policies.
- Event-Driven Triggers: Automation can be triggered by a wide variety of events—such as alerts from ITSM (like ServiceNow), monitoring tools, or scheduled intervals—ensuring your workflows fit your operational model.
- Robust Multi-Vendor, Multi-Domain Support
- Broad Device Integration: NetBrain supports direct integration with a wide range of network devices and controllers (using API, NETCONF, SSH, etc.), across data centers, WAN, campus, and cloud.
- Dynamic Network Mapping: Its real-time network source of truth (NSoT) automatically discovers, inventories, and maps your entire environment—including hybrid and multi-cloud architectures—so automation always acts on accurate data.
- Comprehensive NCCM: NetBrain delivers robust network change and configuration management (NCCM), including automated backups, rollbacks, validation, compliance reporting, and firmware/OS upgrades.
- Centralized and Secure Management
- Granular RBAC: Role-based access control lets you define who can view, edit, or execute automations, aligning with your organization’s security policies.
- Centralized Dashboards: Manage summaries of automation, security, integrations, and network visibility results from a single, map-based UI—making it easy to scale and govern.
- AI-Enhanced Troubleshooting and Flexibility
- AI-Driven Diagnostics: NetBrain leverages AI to suggest root causes, recommend remediation steps, and accelerate incident resolution—customizable to your environment’s needs.
- Custom Integrations: With a published RESTful API, you can connect NetBrain to almost any IT system (ITSM, monitoring, cloud, version control), extending automation into your broader ecosystem.
- Extensible and Scalable
- Network-as-Code (IaC) Support: NetBrain parses and templates device configs (CLI, API, SSH) for automated deployments.
- Scalable Architecture: Whether you’re a small team or a global enterprise, NetBrain’s platform is built to scale with your needs, supporting hundreds of thousands of devices and complex, distributed networks.
The Bottom Line
Network automation isn’t about chasing the latest technology—it’s about building sustainable, scalable processes that free your team to focus on strategic work. The right platform is only part of the answer. Success depends on unifying your approach, expanding your automation scope, investing in skills, and integrating across your IT ecosystem.
By moving beyond point solutions and embracing a platform-centric, workflow-driven strategy, you can overcome the barriers highlighted by Gartner and deliver real business value from network automation.
Experience the Playground today!
Gartner, 2025 Market Guide for Network Automation Platforms,
Ted Corbett, Chris Saunderson, Andrew Lerner, 7 Apr 2025
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Ready to move from research to results? Start small, think big, and let automation drive your network’s future.