Forward Enterprise delivers $14.2M in annual value for the average Forward Networks customer
Read on to discover how Forward Enterprise can boost productivity equivalent to 95.8 full-time employees while enhancing network performance.
What is a Network Digital Twin?
A network digital twin is a digital model of the network that makes network data accessible and actionable to ensure the network behaves as expected and is secure.
Interest in digital twin technology continues to trend upwards, as more enterprise shops realize the need for software to monitor and understand network behavior. Most large enterprises have networks that have grown over the past two or three decades; they are a complex system of devices from dozens of vendors, using multiple operating systems that run on billions of lines of configuration code that is constantly being updated. An additional complication is the reality that the majority of enterprises operate in multiple clouds.
With this increased sophistication comes increased fragility; a single typo during an update has led to major outages. Imagine trying to manually track down the errant code while your company is making the headlines nobody wants. Not only is money being lost during the outage, but the company’s reputation is being damaged.
Based on a mathematical model, the Forward Enterprise digital twin is a virtual representation of the entire network capable of computing every possible path a packet could take. By securely collecting data from network devices, Forward Enterprise makes the entire network searchable, unlocking previously obfuscated yet valuable data.
Forward Networks is designed for the reality of multi-vendor hybrid multi-cloud enterprise networks, providing support for all major networking and security vendors, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Data is collected, parsed, and normalized, providing actionable insights that don’t require specific vendor or technology expertise to interpret.
NetOps, SecOps, and CloudOps teams use this data to drastically reduce time spent diagnosing problems, leading to a more agile, reliable, and secure network.
Gartner believes that digital twin technology is transformational for enterprises, noting that the technology can improve delivery times for requests by 20% across the network. To learn more, read the 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle for Enterprise Networking report.
Recent Major Outages Caused by Human Error:
- A software configuration error caused all US flights to be grounded, delaying or canceling thousands of flights in Q1 of 2023
- A configuration error at KDDI caused over 39 million users to suffer service disruption for 86 hours, impacting critical services across multiple industries in Q3 of 2022
- A BGP misconfiguration took Microsoft offline for 90 minutes in January of 2023 leaving Microsoft customers unable to reach Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, and other services
- A botched maintenance update at Rogers Communications disrupted phone and internet service for 12 million people for over a day in August 2022
- According to a Spring 2023 survey by IDC, The average cost of downtime for large enterprises (5,000+ employees) = $691K per hour
- 1 in 4 of these large enterprises report their cost of downtime is over $1M per hour.
Universal IT
One of the prime benefits of democratizing network data is increasing collaboration amongst the various IT teams. A single source of truth enables teams to work more efficiently, reduce OpEx, and ensure compliance throughout the hybrid multi-cloud network.
Workflow Automation
Opening tickets is a tedious task prone to human error. Once a ticket is open and routed, the engineer on the receiving end often spends hours or days researching the issue. Through an API integration with ServiceNow, Forward Enterprise streamlines that process. NetOps teams can choose to automatically open tickets when specific verification checks fail; that information is then routed with a link to Forward Enterprise containing the details of the issue such as device configuration. Operators opening manual tickets can include links to Forward Enterprise so the recipient has all the necessary information at their fingertips.
“During a major outage, we no longer have to host calls with 100 engineers who then have to manually log into devices to collect information to diagnose the problem. Now an engineer performs a path search in Forward Enterprise, and all the configuration information is at their fingertips in the application. We can solve the problem much faster than before.”
Network Operator, Global Entertainment Company
Inventory Management
For most operations teams, the network inventory is a series of outdated .CSV files and the “communal knowledge” held sacred by the organization’s most seasoned IT staff. That puts the entire team at a disadvantage, slowing ticket resolution, increasing the opportunity for errors, and creating potential security and compliance issues.
Forward Enterprise provides a very accurate device discovery process that delivers an exportable, always-current inventory of your network, available at the click of a mouse. According to an IT leader at a global financial services company, knowing his inventory is accurate has saved his company “seven figures” by preventing them from paying maintenance on devices no longer in use, and integration with his CMBD had improved lifecycle management and helped his team make better use of new devices. Learn more by watching the webinar.
Automated Compliance + Audits
Custom verification checks alert anytime the network is out of compliance; snapshots provide proof of compliance over time
Ensuring network compliance in a hybrid multi-cloud environment is nearly impossible without a digital twin. With teams of engineers making changes and updates to tens of thousands of devices, mistakes are inevitable.
Using custom verification checks in Forward Enterprise, administrators can regularly scan the network to search for misconfigurations, lack of connectivity, or lack of redundancy to proactively identify and remediate non-compliant configurations before they cause an incident.
"Our company has gone through many FBA (Federal Banking Administration) audits. We successfully demonstrate that we have standards, but struggle to demonstrate which devices are in compliance, and don’t have easy way to remediate the devices which are non-compliant. Forward Networks is automating this process for us, saving countless hours of work."
--IT Manager at leading Fortune 250 Financial Services Company
A $9 billion banking company reduced audit time by 80% and proactively detected over 1,500 vulnerabilities in a two-year period
Troubleshooting
Give your most junior engineers troubleshooting superpower
Troubleshooting network issues often requires multiple teams and senior device or cloud experts to decipher the causes of malfunctions. The Forward Enterprise digital twin platform collects, parses, and displays network configuration and state information in an actionable, vendor-agnostic format that allows a Tier 1 engineer to diagnose most issues and route them to the appropriate teams. Reducing escalations means reducing costs. It also frees senior network architects to focus on projects that deliver business value.
Network Outage Prevention
Forward Enterprise's Intent-Checks prevent outages before they happen
Network outages disrupt business, damage brand equity, and diminish customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, they can be caused by something so small as a simple typo. According to Uptime Institute, human error was the cause for 74% of the most severe network outages. That’s why we’ve built intent checks and predict functionality into Forward Enterprise. Engineers can use our digital twin platform to pinpoint issues before they impact the business.
For a global entertainment company, intent checks within Forward Enterprise prevented two potential headline-worthy outages. Read the case study >
Path Verification + Analysis
Know every possible path a packet can take
Path searches are the foundation for understanding the network. To diagnose network behavior, it’s imperative to model exactly how traffic is (and can) move through the network. Additionally, you need a detailed behavior of each device handling packets. Trying to manually analyze why traffic isn’t getting through can take a team of people weeks.
Forward Enterprise can scale to support 10³⁰ network flows and supports networks with >60,000 network and security devices, giving NetOps teams a detailed understanding of the exact behavior of each device in handling different packets delivered in a normalized (vendor-agnostic) manner.
“Forward Enterprise helped me diagnose and resolve a host accessibility issue in minutes. Without the platform and given my full workload, this would have taken 3 – 4 weeks.”
– Network Operations and Security Center Lead, Federal Government
World-class digital twin technology
By considering historical data and initial investment, our customers report significant cost savings in a wide range of different industries. In recent years, business goals have focused on digital transformation, predictive analytics, and advanced analytics. An improved ability to manage and secure digital worlds is imperative to avoiding potential issues that would disrupt supply chains for industrial companies and the production process including product development for consumer goods.
