How to Implement Network Automation in Your Organization

Whether it is to streamline network operations, cut costs or improve employee productivity, automation is necessary for any business.

So how does network automation work? Network automation uses programmable logic to manage network resources and services. Network automation speeds up the configuration, scaling, protection, and integration of network infrastructure and application services compared to manual user labor. Make sure that your infrastructure is ready for automation. Typically, this means thoroughly inventory servers, routers, ADCs, LANs, and firewalls.

Automate Routing

Many organizations need help assigning leads to the right sales reps regarding lead routing. Manually, a sales team can waste hours or even days before an inbound lead is assigned to the appropriate rep. This could lead to leads being dropped, which can negatively impact your funnel.

Implementing automated routing in your organization is the best way to prevent this. This will ensure all incoming leads are assigned to a sales representative when they enter your system, preventing them from being sent to the wrong person or reps.

Automated routing allows you to create rules based on the specific industry, potential deal size, territory, and other factors that will help determine which leads are assigned to your company’s most qualified sales representatives. This will help improve the overall business flow in your company and increase conversions.

In addition, this technology can be used to help you synchronize schedules between multiple departments. This can be especially helpful in ensuring that drivers always work when they should.

Lastly, implementing automation in your network will enable you to better balance the load between vehicles on daily routes. This can be especially useful in the waste industry, where ensuring balanced daily routes can be critical to productivity.

Automate Backups

Automated backups are a crucial component of any comprehensive disaster recovery plan. This ensures you have a copy of your data in the cloud, ready to be restored.

Automating your network backups also reduces the risk of file loss, ensuring that your in-use files are protected. Automated backups are a cost-effective and proactive way to protect your data from cyber-attacks.

Another key benefit of backup automation is that it reduces the risk of human error. Automated backup software is designed to schedule and complete the required backups at designated times automatically.

Moreover, it can automatically upgrade server space to accommodate sudden surges in data storage. This ensures that you always have the right amount of storage for your needs, whether small or large data volume.

Lastly, automatic backup software can perform backup and validation testing to ensure that your backups work and are ready to be restored in the event of a problem. This can reduce your need to manually restore your data, resulting in less stress and more peace of mind.

Automate Monitoring

Network automation replaces manual processes with software-based tools that increase efficiency and reliability and reduce costs by eliminating human error. Automated network monitoring allows IT managers to see changes and problems in real-time and can alert them of any potential issues before they occur.

In addition, automated monitoring can help you protect your data from disasters by retaining backups. This can be important if one of your servers fails and you need to restore data from the backup quickly.

Once you have an accurate network inventory, it’s time to start identifying and automating the most resource-consuming, repetitive network tasks. This can be daunting, but the right partner can guide you through it and ensure your network automation project delivers on its promises.

Automate Security

Automation of security operations and incident response streamlines tasks to accelerate projects, reduce human error and keep teams focused on high-priority threats. Automated tools also eliminate alert fatigue, preventing analysts from responding to genuine threats and increasing the risk of breaches.

Automated tools can automatically remove false positives, enrich alerts with threat intelligence, and group related alerts into a few incidents. They can also prioritize these incidents to ensure they are routed to the most appropriate staff for timely investigation and action.

The key to the successful implementation of automation is ensuring the correct processes are followed, and the right people are trained. Ideally, automated tools will follow predefined playbooks that describe what actions must be taken and when. This is to ensure consistent application and enforcement of your organization’s policies. It also helps to reduce regulatory complexity, as it can automatically flag instances where compliance may be required.

Automate Maintenance

Automation of routine maintenance can free up network administrators to focus on specialized tasks. It also helps to reduce the time spent on manual processes and errors by eliminating repetitive, low-value work.

To start, set SMART goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your business. These goals help you identify areas that you can improve upon and make a plan for moving forward.

For example, if you’re running a network with an aging server that needs regular updates and repairs, automate the process to ensure it gets done. This will ensure the server is always up-to-date and safe from malware attacks.

Alternatively, use automation to schedule firmware upgrades to patch security holes that can compromise devices connected to your network gear. This will save you the cost of bringing technicians to fix security vulnerabilities.

In addition, a fully automated network can easily be scaled for expansion and growth to accommodate additional users, applications, or equipment. This is especially important for organizations that need high levels of security.