An issue that has plagued enterprises, especially small and mid-size outfits, for most of their operational years is the operational burden of the network. It has piled on over the years as the network has scaled leading to a litany of issues and complaints.
The slow burning complexity of managing a ornate network model has caused frequent burnouts in employees, while cost blowouts from new tech acquisitions strain enterprises’ budgets.
Now companies are taking a decidedly modern approach to tackle this problem – automation.
Automation obscures a lot of the underlying technicalities while getting the bulk of the routine job done with little to no manual intervention. Analysts project that this can transform the way networking activities have been done through the decades.
Yet, implementation has been irregular nationwide. Although the potential of the technology is universally recognized, experts observe that businesses have not been able to derive measurable value owing to a number of factors.
The cost of developing automation solutions is significant, and often beyond the means of companies that have limited resource. This is further exacerbated by sparse availability of deep domain expertise which makes it harder to build the technology inhouse.
Those companies that can devote the necessary resource are unimpressed by the limited usability of homegrown automation solutions.
A NaaS Solution That Offers a Premium Automation Experience
A network as a service solution like Nile’s is an enticing option for these struggling enterprises. Nile Access Service that includes Day 0 to lifecycle management automation, takes the entire operational load off of their hands, requiring neither to hire expertise, nor bear the costs of adding third-party tools.
“Typically, when you raise an issue, subject matter experts get involved. You have to go through the hard work of writing a runbook, and there is no magic there,” said Dipen Vardhe, head of Wireless Service and AI Automation Center at Nile.
With Nile, all of the manual tasks of configuration, setup and maintenance are carried out behind the scenes and a truly automated network is delivered to the users.
But how does Nile accomplish this? Vardhe gave a sneak peek of the backstage workings at the recent Mobility Field Day event.
A central piece of the service is the Nile AI Automation Center. This is not a solution that customers interface with, but nevertheless, plays a critical role in Nile’s network operation and optimization services.
“Once the network is up and running on Day 1, internally in the AI Automation Center, it’s ready to be operated and optimized by the Nile team,” said Vardhe.
Designed specially for Nile’s internal team of network engineers, the Nile AI Automation Center is a strikingly plain tool whose function is to catalogue and display information and analytics.
To a Nile network engineer, it principally shows the devices under observation, and the automated actions and optimizations performed on them. Users can view detailed reports of auto-detected point tickets, and the automation runbook that have been deployed to resolve the incidents.
Additionally, the solution provides tenants’ network details like activated Nile elements, AP and sensor placement, and open and accepted deviations. In a highly organized but barebone view, the solution highlights these via a digital twin.
Nile’s team gets access to all this information in real-time. Data gets auto-collected and logged into the console as the incidents are happening.
“During Day 2, we want to make sure that the internal line teams, when they are trying to triage an issue, are able to have all this information about the deployment at their fingertips,” said Vardhe.
But blind automation can just as easily break things, and Nile is mindful of that. Internally, their team of SMEs and engineers constantly review the decision graph that powers the automation to make sure that it is working as it should, Vardhe told.
Lastly, all of this is made possible by Nile’s standardized single network architecture, its fleet of physical and virtual sensors, baked-in advanced automation tooling, and a unified data store.
With “no customer-facing knobs”, and a robust team working tirelessly behind the scenes to keep things going like clockwork, Nile’s automation service is designed to deliver a white-glove experience to it users. Not only does it lift the burden substantially by rendering a lot of the operational tasks invisible, it also brings enterprises closer to a “near-autonomous” network that, for all intents and purposes, drives itself.
Watch Nile’s presentations from the Mobility Field Day to learn more about the Nile Access Service.
