> Agreed, networks are so far behind server and application development > and automation in my opinion. Whilst I have seen a dozen presentations > from operators or hosting providers, content providers etc on how they > have automated zero-touch-provisioning or automated service > deployment, these are almost always bespoke systems they have written, > not a standards based, vendor agnostic, transactional systems, which > is where I desperately want to go to (and want the world to go). >
I think it depends on what angle you come from. In my view in the app and infrastructure space there at one level there is less of a atomic service demand and less state to maintain so it's easier to do it although I wouldn't say it's easy nor pervasive. If I think about a complex IT stack for delivering a service that touches many applications I would say that this problem exists in that domain also for example a bank running the faster payments application. On the network side each individual atom is simple enough to automate (but rarely provides any value) but the area we have completely failed as an industry is pulling those atoms together as a set of services or a capability outcome, mostly down to our lack of ambition to change how we create and operate networks (interconnect and peering are top of the list for change in my view). Network services are becoming too complex and the atoms too interactive between one another for that to continue hence the approach to build models as Rob notes. We as an industry need to take this area of development back from vendors and tell them what we want rather than being dumped on by the stuff that's currently provided. That's our approach to openconfig but there is a lot of work to do. Regards Neil.
