In earlier IBN announcements, Cisco addressed what it calls translation, the act of capturing the business intent that IT is trying to get out of the network and translating that into policies the network understands. This phase also checks that these policies can be deployed without conflicting with other intents.
The next phase Cisco announced was orchestrating the policy throughout the underlying infrastructure with configuration of individual devices and making sure they have been provisioned correctly to deliver the intent.
This latest phase, assurance, guarantees that the orchestrated policies are actually delivering on the intent. Assurance continuously verifies that the network is remaining in the right state to do so. This is done by gathering and analyzing data from all devices in the network, both hardware and software. The analysis can give context to events on the network that can help troubleshoot problems more quickly. And, the analysis can recommend actions that could be taken to correct problem issues, the company says.
This can be accomplished with Cisco gear, but the company is also working with other vendors so their products can contribute to a more comprehensive IBN infrastructure, the company says. Some of these vendors are Citrix, F5, AVI, Splunk and VMware.
Some of these additions to Cisco’s IBN portfolio are available now and others will be added over the next few months.
