Introduction
The evolution of networking technology has been accelerating in recent years. From the emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to cloud adoption to the recent trends in artificial intelligence (AI), the landscape of networking continues to undergo rapid transformation. In this quest for innovation and insight, the Network Automation Forum’s Autocon 0 conference dared to ask the question “Why haven’t we seen full adoption of network automation, yet?”. Jason Davis, from Cisco Systems rightly called this the “Chris Grundemann conundrum“. Autocon 0 was organized by my friends Chris Grundemann and Scott Robohn (with a lot of help from a host of others). When Scott first called me and explained the idea, I told him I loved it and I wanted to be involved. This blog will be my impressions and takeaways from the inaugural event that I am SURE will become a staple for network automation practitioners.
The Venue
Autocon 0 was held at the Denver Marriott Tech Center. Over the years, I have spent a lot of time in this particular hotel while traveling to the Denver area. I was impressed by the renovations they have done to the hotel. It served as a great venue for for this conference. The vendor area was between the lobby and the main conference room. This allowed for plenty of space for attendees and vendors to interact during breaks and happy hours. The main conference room was just the right size for this event with a main stage and plenty of table seating. Being in the Tech Center area of Denver also allowed for a lot of nearby restaurants, bars, and coffee shops for attendees to unwind.
Opening Remarks
The conference kicked off with Opening Remarks from Chris and Scott. Scott mentioned that he just met Chris about a year ago and they started planning for this event. It was clear that since then, they have built a good working relationship with one another. Both are looking to give back to the community and help to build a place where learning and colloboration can happen among folks build network automation for their organizations. They had roughly 350 people register for the event and more than 315 attended. For the first time putting on the event, I would call that resounding success.
General Sessions
The speaker lineup for Autocon 0 was impressive to say the least. There were keynote presentations from John Willis and Kireeti Kompella. Some of the leaders in network automation like Jeremy Schulman, Kirk Byers, and Chris Cummings delivered talks on their automation journey. There were also some great panels to discuss topics like The State of Network Automation, Challenges to Network Automation Adoption, AI and ML, and Observability. Probably my favorite session was Cat Gurinsky titled Simplified Troubleshooting through API Scripting. She did a great job of describing some easy wins operators can get by just automation troubleshooting commands. More on that in a moment.
Key Takeaways and Insights
There was definitely an air of excitement at Autocon 0. Every attendee I talked with is excited to see where this event and the engagement can take us as an industry. Even the vendor engagement was very colloborative in nature. A few key things I took away from the event:
- Reskilling is needed – A lot of the attendees come from traditional networking background. We tend to hop on a CLI and do the configuration needed versus opening up an IDE and writing some code. Network engineers will have to learn one or more programming languages, DevOps methods and procedures, and new habits. There are examples of this being successful but it does take a focused effort. Some of the more successful organizations built a tiger team with both network engineers and software developers that work together day to day to start automating some of the more repetitive tasks. This allows both teams to learn from each other over time.
- Trust must be earned – Automation can go very wrong. Most anyone who has dabbled in network automation has a horror story of messing up the production network. That does not mean all automation is bad. It just means we have to proceed with caution. Plenty of network outages were caused by manual changes gone wrong as well. Automating the changes makes it easier to find and fix the changes. Building the trust that automation leads to a more stable network will take time.
- Incremental is the way forward – No organization went from zero to hero over night. All of the presenters talked about automation as a journey. It took time to develop the processes, procedures, code, and more to be succesful. Like any journey, it begins with the first step. The best way to get started is to find a small routine, and time consuming, task that you can automate. One example that was given was automating SNMP community string updates or password changes. Another one was the gathering of data for troubleshooting. They are things that help augment the engineer without having to make major changes to the network.
Conclusion
As Autocon 0 drew to a close, it left a lasting impact on the attendees. The insights gained and connections forged during the event will undoubtedly reverberate through the industry. The conference served as a catalyst for innovation, inspiring attendees to implement and advocate for advanced automation strategies within their organizations.
As attendees departed, they carried with them not just newfound knowledge but a shared vision: a future where network automation accelerates the way we connect, communicate, and innovate. It will not happen overnight but with incremental steps, we can get there.
The Network Automation Forum’s Autocon 0 was more than a conference; it was a testament to the passion for technology practioners in this space have. If you were not able to attend Autocon 0, I suggest you keep an eye out for the video replays and seriously consider attending Autocon 1.
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