Enterprises are taking advantage of core and edge clouds to digitally transform their operations using new distributed applications. These enterprise applications make different demands and consume data center and network resources in less predictable ways. The rapid growth in the number and logical distribution of these applications across cloud data centers is now challenging network operations, especially during the pandemic, but this is expected to continue intensifying.
A growing question among network operators is: “How can I match the growing scale of cloud-based applications without disproportionately increasing the costs of designing, building, and operating the new data center network environment?” The only way to ensure operational models keep pace and scale cost-effectively is to use end-to-end network automation. Specifically, using closed-loop automation to continuously monitor the network, traffic, and available resources to automatically make adjustments that ensure optimal service quality and resource utilization based on predetermined intent. To achieve such intent-based networking with closed-loop automation requires a solid foundation that makes network resources as consumable as compute and storage.