Forward Networks’ flagship product, Forward Enterprise, delivers a vendor-agnostic “digital twin” of the network, designed for both cloud and on-prem networks
Today’s networks are too complex for manual network management and updates. With most enterprises composed of tens of thousands of devices spanning multiple geographical locations, on-premises hardware, Virtual environment, and multiple clouds – it’s virtually impossible to push updates manually. Also – the sheer volume of vendors and coding languages can be overwhelming for a network operations engineer. In most cases learning a new language or new platform takes eight weeks to achieve basic proficiency; its not realistic to expect human skills to scale at the pace of network innovation (aka network complexity)
Fig 1. Itential Automation Example
Which is why we decided to integrate the Forward Networks platform with the industry-leading network assurance platform, Itential. Their low-code automation platform makes it easy for network operations teams to deploy and manage multi-domain infrastructures. Itential’s cloud-native software as a service offering provides a low-code interface that seamlessly connects to any IT system, cloud, or network technology for end-to-end closed-loop network automation and orchestration. Forward Enterprise enables network operators to deploy automated changes with the assurance that they are in compliance with network policies and won’t have any unintended side effects.
Fig 2. Closing the Loop: Automation + Verification
Forward Enterprise helps network operations engineers avoid outages through its unique mathematical model. The platform creates a digital twin of the network (across on-premises devices, private and public cloud) enabling network operators to map all possible traffic flows, instantly troubleshoot, verify intent, predict network behavior, and reduce MTTR (mean time to resolution). Itential simplifies and accelerates the deployment and management of multi-domain network infrastructure. Both platforms support major network equipment vendors and AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud platforms.
Fig 3. Automate Service Provisioning with Forward Networks and Itential
The Closed Loop Automation process enabled by the integration of Forward Networks Platform and Itential Automation Platform (IAP) acts as a safeguard to prevent any issues from becoming pervasive following a change window. Using the pre-built automations, templates, form builder, automation builder within Automation Studio makes it easy for network operations engineers to build an automation catalog that enables changes at scale. By using the API integration with Forward Networks, they can verify routing, add intent checks, verify new service connectivity, check for side effects and send notifications and verifications via Slack, Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEX, and email. Integration with change management systems including ServiceNow and Jira ensure everyone is working from a single source of truth and expedites collaboration. In the event of an issue, the diff check functionality within the Forward Networks platform makes it easy to pinpoint which changes are causing any unplanned behavior.
Network operations teams rely on highly specialized tools developed by individual vendors designed to address particular problems. The result? Most enterprises have 10+ Network Operations applications in place and they don’t talk to each other—which means that network operations engineers spend an exhaustive and unnecessary amount of time toggling between applications and sifting through information as they work to resolve tickets. Multiple tools providing state information introduces inconsistencies in the data accuracy and level of detail.
Because information is not portable between applications or is vendor-specific, inaccessible because it’s siloed due to security boundaries across the network, or current, the teams charged with network and security operations are at a disadvantage. When people working to solve a problem have incorrect, incomplete, or out-of-date information they cannot efficiently solve problems.
We don’t think it should be that hard
Forward Networks was created to make the hard parts of network operations easier. For us, that means giving instant access to the information you need to troubleshoot and resolve network issues.
The Forward Networks platform is based on a mathematical model that creates a digital twin of the network. This software-based twin provides a comprehensive visualization of all possible network paths, a searchable index of configurations presented in a vendor-neutral manner easily understandable for even tier-one support specialists, the ability to verify network behavior, and predict how NAT or ACL changes will impact the network. Network state information is updated at regular intervals determined by the operations team.
To ease the burden on network operations teams, we’ve developed an integration between Forward Networks and ServiceNow that provides a single source of truth for the network and enables more efficient use of both platforms. The integration between the applications allows engineers to automatically share relevant details about network state, configuration, and behavior with everyone working on resolving this issue. This information automatically updates within both platforms creating a detailed and current single source of truth. The integration between the two applications takes only seconds to enable and configure.
Reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR)
A typical incident response involves several teams, the network operations engineer who got the call, maybe the apps team or security team, more senior engineers if the case needs to be escalated. The difficulty of resolving issues is compounded when everyone is working from their own assumptions and data. One of the most effective ways to reduce mean time to resolution is by creating an accurate single source of truth and ensuring everyone involved has access to it.
Because Forward Networks regularly verifies that the network is behaving as intended, it can (at the discretion of the network operation team) proactively open, update ServiceNow incidents based on these verification checks. Whether incidents are created automatically or manually, a link to the relevant data becomes part of the incident and is updated as the system collects network state information, this ensures everyone is working from the same information. For existing ServiceNow incidents, the Forward Networks integration allows network engineers to capture relevant information and add it to the incident, again saving the resolution team time they would have spent researching the issue.
This integration also allows networks operations to verify that the changes they’ve made have resolved the issue by running a query. The platform will show if the issue is resolved or allow the engineer solving the issue to see how their change impacted the network and what else may be causing the issue, this way tickets can be followed through to resolution. Incident history can be viewed from within Forward Networks or ServiceNow allowing the engineering team to see all actions and status from their platform of choice.
The real benefit of this integration is immediate access to information that reduces the mean time to resolution from hours to minutes for most problems.
See the Forward Networks ServiceNow integration in action
Telecom network operators are investing in new software and hardware to create faster, more complex networks, but with added complexity comes added vulnerability. Software that automates network management and reduces downtime is extremely valuable to operators, and as networks become more heterogeneous, hardware-agnostic software is generating strong interest across industries.
Those are the issues driving Forward Networks, a Silicon Valley startup founded to help telecom operators cut costs and reduce risk. Conceived by a foursome of Stanford PhD.s, Forward Networks creates algorithms to help operators see and understand the behavior of enterprise networks. The company just announced a $35 million Series C funding round led by Goldman Sachs.
