Network Automation is just getting started and it’s odd to say that as IT professionals from other technology disciplines are always surprised to see how much manual interaction there still is between the networking engineering/operations teams and the actual devices they manage.

I’ll never forget the days in 2012-2013 performing my best Google searches to find ways to program or to automate network routers and switches. I didn’t care what programming language was being used or even what tool, but I found nothing. Every time I heard someone say they were using a network script, I’d say “email it to me, that sounds interesting.” Unfortunately, 100% of the time, it ended up being a notepad or a Word file, not a script. What a bummer.

I like to think I’m a solid Googler too. It was amazing though - there was near nothing. Do a search today on network automation or network programming and you’d be amazed on what you’ll find - we’ve come a long way in the past 36 months with respect to network automation, but I truly believe we’re still in the 2nd or 3rd inning (if we were playing a game of baseball, of course).

At this point, the industry needs feedback. We need to primarily see what our peers are doing and maybe more importantly ensure vendors are aware for the need of better tools, libraries, and APIs. We need a collective voice.

In order to help make that happen, a public and anonymous Network Automation Survey was created that was initiated by several folks on the Network to Code Community Slack team. I played a very small part in helping create it and now just doing a small part to make more people aware of it…

So, please, do your part. Take the Survey!

Until the results are reviewed and cleaned up, they are even available in raw format - full transparency along the way.

Happy Automating!

Thanks,

Jason

@jedelman8