Learn the ROI of a Network Digital Twin

The ROI of a
Network Digital Twin

The financial return on aligning your team,
simplifying troubleshooting and avoiding outages

We started our journey with Forward Networks defining success as lower operational costs. Once we began using it, we discovered so many other use cases. Embracing Forward Networks has enabled us to support business growth and new product offerings — things we wouldn’t have been able to do using our previous technology.

Managing Director, Technology

Multinational Investment Bank & Financial Services Company

Increased Network Complexity Creates
Business Case For Visualization, Verification
and Predict Technology

The Current State of Network Operations

DOZENS of vendors

THOUSANDS of devices

MILLIONS of rules

A Fortune 500 enterprise company
has, on average--

>12,750 devices on their network

>3 BILLION lines of code

>500 model and firmware combinations

100s of changes each week

The Fortune 500 companies we work with have global networks with tens of thousands of devices from dozens of vendors running billions of lines of code spanning on-premises and multiple public clouds. At this scale, it’s impossible for any engineering team to keep. “a mental map” of this environment.

That’s why Forward Networks created a “network digital twin” that immediately delivers actionable information in a vendor-agnostic format.

Using very complex math, we’ve simplified network troubleshooting and verification. Time-consuming processes such as trouble-shooting and path searches, can now be completed in seconds.

Also, because we have a comprehensive inventory of every device in the network and its state and configuration, we have a sandbox that operations engineers can use to predict how configuration changes will impact traffic before they’re pushed live.

To learn how our mathematical model based
Digital Twin can help you, watch this video:

Forward Networks features

Visualization

Get an always accurate, single-pane view of network topology for on-premises, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform for Layers 2-4. Drill down to specific devices and traffic flows, including configuration and state data.

Search

Use our browser-like search capabilities to achieve Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) for network issues in seconds. Perform complete end-to-end path analyses across the network for both on-premises and cloud infrastructure.

Verify

Constantly monitor network behavior across on-premises, cloud and virtual overlay networks with purpose-built intent checks. Continuously audit the network and receive actionable alerts for noncompliance.

Predict

The network digital twin acts as a sandbox, so engineers can test configurations and determine their impact on traffic flow before pushing them live. That helps avoid outages or other unintended consequences.

Compare

The Forward Networks platform can be a powerful, historical forensic tool. At predefined times, the network collector scans the network to ensure configuration and state information and then stores the snapshots. See configuration changes between any points in time to identify which policy or rule behaviors impact traffic flow.

Outages are expensive

Twitter

In October 2020, an
“inadvertent change to
systems” compromised
$250,000 in ad revenue
at Twitter

Twitter experiences widespread outages in October 2020: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/twitter-down-outage-1234953749 - (1 billion ad revenue per year; 8760 hours in a year; 1 B/8760 = $114,115 per hour)

Amazon

In 2018, Amazon lost $100 million during a one-hour network outage

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-day-website-issues-cost-it-millions-in-lost-sales-2018-7

Facebook

In March 2019, Facebook experienced a 14-hour outage:
• 110 million in lost ad revenue
• $13.46 billion in lost market capitalization

https://www.tsg.com/blog/business-strategy/how-much-did-facebook-outage-really-cost

$1 million

60% of network outages cost at least $1 million in operational disruption, reputational damage, lost data and financial loss

Reducing Mean Time to Resolution
(MTTR)

Networks are a complex web of devices, protocols, policies and services—and no one person can maintain expertise across this technical continuum.

When something goes wrong, the first step towards resolution is identifying the problem. Most engineers use their experience and gut instinct as a starting point and then begin a time-intensive path search to find the problem.

Because the issue is typically hidden somewhere in the billions of lines of network configuration, this analysis can take weeks. Meanwhile, productivity is compromised, and customers aren’t getting the best experience.

The prevalence of hybrid environments and the lack of visibility in the cloud make it even more complicated for engineers to resolve network issues swiftly.

Forward Networks provides end-to-end path analysis, including within AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform, in seconds.

"We’ve reduced our MTTR by 80% using Forward Networks search functionality."

Network Operations Director

Fortune 50
Media & Entertainment Company

A Platform That Pays for Itself

To err is human.

That’s clear from a recent Uptime Institute study that found human error was the cause for 74% of the most severe network outages. Something as simple as a typo in a configuration can take down mission-critical traffic flows.

That’s why we’ve built intent checks and predict functionality into the Forward Networks Platform. Engineers can use our platform to pinpoint issues before they
impact the business.

Head of Operations for
Global Financial Services

"Had we been using Forward Networks one year prior, we could have prevented about 90% of our P1/P2 outages. That savings alone pays for the platform."

Head of Network Operations
Global Internet Provider

"By reducing the number of P1 tickets, we’ve saved $600,000 in two years."

Reduce OPEX with Fewer Escalations

Equipment from dozens of vendors running billions of lines of configurations comprise today’s networks—which also likely include more than one cloud service provider.

IT pros can spend their entire career becoming an expert in specific network equipment or. cloud profiles. The upshot: Troubleshooting network issues often requires multiple teams.

The Forward Networks 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.

"The amount of information available in the Forward Networks Platform means our Tier 1 and Tier 2 staff can troubleshoot faster without
escalation."

Senior IT Leader,

U.S. Government

A Single Source of Truth for
the Entire Network

For most Ops teams, the idea of a current
network inventory and topology is as realistic as having a pet dragon th

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Bill Wright