SearchNetworking has acknowledged Gluware Inc. with its Community Innovation Award — an editorially unbiased prize that acknowledges significant developments in networking and unified communications — for its multivendor, multi-domain clever community automation software program. Of specific word: The Gluware automation platform has impressed real-world enterprise customers with its skill to effectively and successfully automate tens of 1000’s of units throughout difficult brownfield environments, the place new instruments should cooperate with legacy {hardware} and software program. Importantly, community engineers do not want coding or scripting expertise to make use of the intent-based software program. The not too long ago launched Gluware 4.0 platform additionally gives a SaaS possibility for smaller organizations occupied with self-service, cloud-based automation.
SearchNetworking spoke with Gluware co-founder and CEO Jeff Grey about how the corporate’s clever community automation software program works and why it is garnered unprecedented curiosity because the starting of the worldwide pandemic.
Editor’s word: This interview has been edited for size and readability.
What drawback or problem did Gluware got down to tackle?
Jeff Grey: Gartner says [around 70%] of networks are nonetheless managed manually immediately. And [according to 2016 research McKinsey & Company conducted on behalf of Cisco] 70% of all coverage violations are resulting from human error, with 75% of annual NetOps Opex — billions of {dollars} — spent making community adjustments and troubleshooting issues which have gone incorrect. However what if there was software program that might forestall these issues earlier than they occur? That is why Gluware is targeted on serving to enterprise networks turn out to be clever, self-operating, self-healing environments.
Jeff Grey
Each single enterprise community out there’s a snowflake. How do you automate one thing that is completely different each time? How do you soften that snowflake so you may automate it? Nicely, that is actually the superpower of Gluware. We’re the one firm, that we’re conscious of, able to auto-discovering any enterprise community throughout 30-plus completely different vendor working techniques. Our config modeling app permits the shopper to onboard and summary their distinctive snowflake, robotically breaking configurations into completely different function objects and creating a precise information mannequin illustration of what’s working within the community and the way — a digital twin.
As soon as we try this, we’re in a position to expose an incredible quantity of safety violations, outage-causing misconfigurations and performance-limiting misconfigurations, and share these with the shopper’s IT or networking staff. And invariably, each buyer we have labored with has discovered configuration deviations. We are able to inform them how far deviated and the way far out of compliance the community has gotten, which is effective data for purchasers trying to eradicate or considerably cut back outages, improve safety, enhance agility and get monetary savings.
At that time, our software program is then in a position to exit and cleanse the community and hold it clear. With Gluware, it is doable to take the gold normal for a way the community ought to look and behave, and drive multiply to deliver every little thing again to the company normal and into compliance. Then the following section entails preserving it in compliance — consistently auditing and auto-remediating. Our know-how can also be able to taking any new change the shopper needs to make and making use of that persistently all through the community at scale. One in all our massive prospects made 41,000 adjustments over 12 months, for instance.
Do customers must know the best way to code and script to make use of the Gluware platform?
Grey: Our platform permits community engineers that know CLI [command line interface] to get in there and begin automating immediately — with no need to learn to code, script or write playbooks. After the auto-discovery course of, they only select the ‘golden configuration’ they need to use. Gluware wraps it in JSON, makes it absolutely merchandise potent and declarative after which drive multiplies it to cleanse the community so it aligns with coverage.
Community engineers do not want any coding or scripting expertise to make use of Gluware, in accordance with CEO Jeff Grey.
Webscale firms like Google, Fb, Goldman Sachs, main retailers that compete with Amazon, and so forth., take into account scripting and automation a part of their core enterprise. However for the overwhelming majority of firms, their core competency is not constructing their very own software program. None of us are going to construct our personal self-operating automobiles, proper? The Teslas of the world are going to try this. Equally, Gluware is targeted on driving the appearance of self-operating networks.
MasterCard adopted our full stack and automatic 15,000 units throughout their present brownfield structure in 16 weeks. [They] informed us that may have beforehand taken them years to realize. Jeff GreyCEO, Gluware Inc.
That mentioned, we’re additionally exposing our improvement atmosphere to our extra superior prospects which have improvement capabilities. So, we service the enterprises that do not need to reinvent the wheel — those who simply know CLI — and we deliver them into the automation sport shortly. Then we additionally work with superior enterprises that need to develop on prime of our framework and convey the DevOps and NetOps worlds collectively.
Acuity Insurance coverage, for instance, is an organization with about 250 builders. They wished to automate their Juniper-based [Ethernet VPN]-VXLAN material to unfold VLANs and different parameters from their CI/CD [continuous integration and continuous delivery] pipeline. Gluware is ready to exit, auto-ingest EVPN-VXLAN and make them automatable. Then we use our northbound API to plug into their CI/CD pipeline and join the worlds of NetOps and DevOps. Now they do not should spend time making an attempt to script every little thing on this superior and concerned material.
Are you able to inform us extra about your prospects?
Grey: Mastercard adopted our full stack and automatic 15,000 units throughout their present brownfield structure in 16 weeks. James Radford [vice president of site reliability and engineering at Mastercard] informed us that may have beforehand taken them years to realize. With Gluware, they now have the flexibility to implement 99% of world community adjustments in 24 hours and have 99.9% configuration consistency. The remaining 0.1% accounts for intentional drift for a few of Mastercard’s one-off, customer-specific duties, earlier than auto-remediation brings it again to 100%. The senior executives there are additionally monitoring the Gluware defect fee, which continues to be 0%.
Mastercard had additionally been having challenges preserving their audits updated. They now have enhanced safety, having moved first to quarterly patching and now to on-demand and month-to-month patching with our know-how. Their final aim is to deal with their community material as an extension of their CI/CD pipeline, with completely automated implementation and no guide configurations or human intervention.
The worldwide pandemic underscored the rapid and ongoing want for automation throughout the enterprise.
Terracon, a worldwide engineering agency, already had Gluware when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they usually have been in a position to reconfigure their total community for all new distant workforce visitors patterns in two hours. That was an actual feather within the Terracon community staff’s cap — that made them look good for buying Gluware earlier than the pandemic. They’ve additionally had an 80% discount in main outages since adoption, with 90% much less time spent on troubleshooting. They’re in a position to shortly and precisely perceive the place issues are — whether or not it is a vendor OS difficulty or safety restrictions or different defects. Their staff shared that they’re now in a position to see and resolve some issues earlier than the difficulty tickets even hit their desks, letting them instantly reply to customers and say, ‘We have simply fastened that.’
Different public reference Gluware prospects embody Merck, First Financial institution and Acuity Insurance coverage. We additionally labored with a Large 4 tax and audit agency on accelerated adoption within the peak of the pandemic, when automation grew to become a prime precedence of their COVID-19 response plan. All of the sudden, all people needed to do business from home; all of their visitors patterns modified; there have been every kind of safety violations; nobody might contact their gear anymore; there have been provide chain challenges. If somebody sawed off a community department, then customers have been locked out of the community. So, automation grew to become a core infrastructure want actually in a single day. I wish to say that we have been a very good vitamin earlier than COVID-19, however clever community automation has now turned us right into a painkiller. We have had an inflow of mature offers like we have by no means actually earlier than seen, as a result of automation has turn out to be way more necessary.
And the way does the brand new Gluware Professional providing in Gluware 4.0 work?
Grey: Gluware Professional is designed for networks with as much as 2,000 units. We have been pressured to go on-prem for a few of our largest prospects, however that is our refreshed SaaS providing. Whereas the enterprise product is way more personalized and tailor-made, we’re bending the department down so smaller organizations can use the identical automation that the Credit cards, Terracons and Acuity Insurances of the world use. It is all self-serve out of AWS, so that you by no means have to speak to our gross sales staff. We had a buyer not too long ago that acquired every little thing up and working and was auditing their group in two hours, and we consider we will get that window all the way down to half-hour sooner or later.
Jeff Grey
