Network operations (NetOps) is an approach to building and maintaining a reliable infrastructure to support a virtualized world. NetOps is an evolution of DevOps (development operations). DevOps is an IT mindset that fosters communication, collaboration, and integration among software developers and operational IT teams. As it stands today, NetOps includes an ever-increasing amount of automation and orchestration to make network operations faster, accessible and agile.
So, why are network engineers so excited about NetOps? Well, it has a ton of use cases. One example, a favorite of engineers is that when NetOps runs on a console server, its tools allow engineers to automate repetitive routines, minimize errors and increase efficiency. Best of all, they don’t have to waste their time making frequent trips to physical sites. Moreover, NetOps intertwines with the success of the whole business. Why? Because DevOps tools are increasingly involved in networking. Whether people realize it or not—everyone needs a network to do their job. A healthy network is a healthy business.
Nevertheless, there is a slight problem with the rapid success of NetOps, and that is that a skill or training gap for engineers has emerged. Essentially, skilled network engineers are hard to come by, and it is becoming economically and logistically impossible for organizations to station their network engineers at each site. For NetOps to reach its full potential, enterprises will need to find a way to bridge this skills gap.
The current state of NetOps
In a recent survey polled network managers, network architects, and network engineers from the UK, US, France, and Germany, 97 percent of respondents regarded NetOps as ‘important’ to network infrastructure planning. A closer look at the survey results shows that only 5 percent of respondents decreased investment in NetOps over the past two. Only 5 percent! The overwhelming majority (87 percent) said their organizations increased their investment, with nearly half (48 percent) of those who increased spending by around 50 percent or more. As for the uses of NetOps, respondents said that their businesses use it for digital transformation, business continuity, and cost savings. NetOps enhances network security, fixes systems, remediates network problems, and facilitates the ongoing management and monitoring of networks. In other words, NetOps is fundamental to network management.
How to solve this skills gap problem
To solve the skills gap, organizations need to take a hard look at the current role of their engineers. Business leaders will realize that the engineer’s role has drastically changed even at a cursory glance. For starters, way more is expected of them today than in the past. Engineers have significantly more locations to look after, meaning more equipment management and more data flowing through devices.
Much of the reason why enterprises adopted NetOps in the first place was to lighten a load of their overworked engineers by moving to a fully automated approach. However, many organizations are still not supporting their engineers in the transition to NetOps—hence, the skills gap. Only 32 percent of those surveyed said that their network management/engineering team completed NetOps training. Even more concerning is that over half of engineers indicated they had taught themselves in their spare time.
Bridging the skills gap and making NetOps successful will require enterprises to invest in their staff. While that may not sound like the most groundbreaking insight, it’s true! Engineers are smart people. They need the right training. Here are some ways to help:
- Ensure that engineers are certified and either a CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) or a CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate).
- Help them develop an understanding of docker containers and how to program in Python.
- Provide resources so that they learn to use specific tools such as Ansible, Chef, and Puppet.
Lucky for organizations, their network engineers want to learn about NetOps. The same survey found that more than two-thirds (67 percent) of engineers thought the emergence of NetOps in their organization had “added value to their role and made their work more rewarding.” By providing the necessary in-house training for network engineers, everyone will benefit.
NetOps is like a swiss army knife for engineers. It helps with standard day-to-day processes, keeps the network running, and even provides an alternative pathway to remediate when the network goes down. If organizations want to enjoy these NetOps applications and features, they’ll need to take the time and energy to provide their network engineers with training.
