Subject: Network automation and virtualizatation in the sdn. Author: Yunusov J. Verified: Mirzakulov X. Samarkand-2021 Thame

SDN requires an evolution of service assurance solutions

When a service provider has to deliver services off-net or outside of its own footprint, visibility into network performance and customer experience can be a challenge. Service assurance solutions for SDN-based services, such as SD-WAN, must be flexible, vendor-agnostic and easy to deploy in a virtualized infrastructure for end-to-end service quality management.
Accedian’s Skylight suite of solutions can provide end-to-end visibility into SDN and NFV-based services. Using Accedian’s years of experience in the service provider environment, and recently added layer 4-7 monitoring and reporting for network and applications performance, service providers can fully assure network and cloud-based services are meeting agreed performance objectives. Most importantly, they can confidently control the end-user customer experience.

How Can Network Automation Be Improved With SDN

As networks are quickly transforming into platforms for agile applications and analytics, IT leaders are challenged to achieve greater efficiencies through network automation. Traditionally, network automation involved simple scripts embedded in device configurations to handle repetitive tasks. For the most part, network provisioning and configurations were manually performed. The manual processes are usually cumbersome, resource-inefficient, and involves error-prone, inconsistent policies.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) introduces network virtualization capabilities, which makes it easier to build and manage network automation tasks. Using SDN, networks can be provisioned at the software-layer, by abstracting the underlying physical hardware. This takes automation to the next level and significantly accelerates network provisioning and configuration management. It also enables IT to attach network and security services to workloads using a policy-driven approach.
SDN is thus a key enabler for advanced network automation at scale. That’s also probably the reason why we’d often find the terms SDN and network automation used interchangeably.