EMA White Paper | Operational Efficiency at Scale with Intent-Based, No-Code Network Automation €urthermore, many of these tools reuire scripting and programming expertise, which remain hard to find. These coding reuirements can negatively impact scalability of automation and don’t address other use cases, such as network troubleshooting. €inally, if a network infrastructure vendor provides any tool, Š has seen that it will have limited support of other vendors’ products, which will render it less useful in today’s multi-vendor, multi-cloud hybrid networks. Šach of these approaches to network automation can provide value, but they reuire heavy lifting. etwork teams must maintain teams of experts that can maintain them and update them when new features and functionalities are needed. lso, many of them are geared toward highly skilled users, and admins with less advanced networking skills cannot use them. Thus, commercial tools have only a moderate impact on network operations, while developer-led homegrown solutions and scripting often fail to deliver a return on investment—and many are abandoned. No-Code, Intent-Aware Network Automation IT organi ations should ad¦ust their operational plan to be more strategic and forward-looking. They should leverage the combined knowledge and expertise of their own sub¦ect matter experts by adopting tools that take developers and coders out of the process and allow these experts to capture the application-centric intents of the business through no-code automation. This will allow users of network automation to clearly understand how to maintain the network in the context of criti- cal business services. In other words, organi ations should consider no-code, intent-aware network automation solutions. The Value of Intent Awareness etwork intent refers to the business logic and reuirements behind a network’s design. These intents define the performance, security, and connectivity needs of each application. Traditionally, network engineers attempt to translate this intent into individual network device configurations and scripts. £ince the intent is translated on a device-by-device basis, engineers can sometimes lose sight of the forest amongst the trees. †riginal intent is obscured, and all that remains is a set of decontextuali ed device configuration standards with no ongoing connection to current or evolv- ing business reuirements. . 5
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