Cisco announces Crosswork Network Automation software portfolio
Cisco unveiled five new pieces of software as part of its Cisco Crosswork Network Automation software portfolio for service providers. The new solutions, which are designed to work together, include Cisco’s Crosswork Change Automation, Crosswork Health Insights, Crosswork Data Platform, Crosswork Network Insights and Crosswork Situation Manager.
The new system is built on intent-based networking to enable networks to anticipate and respond to changes in real-time. It is intended to help service providers manage the onslaught of web-connected devices putting pressure on network infrastructures. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, approximately 27 billion devices and connections are anticipated to be running on service provider networks by 2021.
Cisco has been advancing intent-based networking solutions as a means of monitoring network performance, pinpointing issues and solving problems automatically. Last June, for example, Cisco premiered intent-based networking solutions as part of the company’s “vision to create an intuitive system that anticipates actions, stops security threats in their tracks, and continues to evolve and learn.”
According to Cisco, its new tools will collectively deliver visibility at scale, data-driven insights and out-come based automation. The software portfolio provides users with a single point of integration with zero-touch telemetry, machine learning intuition, open APIs and automated actions. Cisco Services can help customers with planning, customization and implementation.
“The other automation tools in use today are typically siloed with a single use focus and have little integration or intelligence sharing across the full automation lifecycle,” Greg Nehib, senior product and solutions marketing manager, Cisco, told RCR Wireless News. “Single use tools tend to be bottlenecks for long term progress. While the Cisco Crosswork Network Automation solution can be used in a single use capacity to resolve one business constraint, they are also fully integrated to work together to form a closed-loop automation lifecycle. This is achieved via Open APIs toward other Cisco and third party automation applications and standards based model driven telemetry toward the network devices, including multi-vendor networks. In a nutshell, the Cisco Crosswork solution is much more comprehensive.”
Among the new solutions, Cisco’s Crosswork Change Automation provides automated operations applications, enabling large-scale change and closed-loop control. Cisco Crosswork Health Insights is equipped with smart sensors, smart alerts and smart remediation to monitor and optimize networks. Both Cisco Crosswork Data Platform and Network Insights feature an open source and commercial-class data analytics platform; while Cisco Crosswork Situation Manager leverages machine to pinpoint faults across multiple network domains.
“Only Cisco can offer this comprehensive and holistic automation approach to solve challenges of today’s mass scale infrastructure,” said Jonathan Davidson, senior vice president and general manager, service provider networking, Cisco. “Our primary goal for network automation is to help our customers turn growing pains into growing profit, and streamline operations so they can spend less time on tactical ‘firefighting’ and more time on identifying and trialing new revenue streams.”
