Talking Automation: Mistakes Happen – Limit Them with Multi-Vendor Automation

0:00 [Music]

0:14 you can take great people who who are

0:16 super smart they know exactly what

0:18 they're doing and you know they're

0:20 they're working 60 70 hours a week

0:22 trying to go extra fast and you know

0:24 mistakes happen that's that's just the

0:26 way it that's the way it works

0:28 um and you know like your example the

0:30 guy that got this new automation tool

0:32 hey i can just push this out everywhere

0:34 you know it was it was a legitimate

0:36 mistake it wasn't that he was you know

0:38 doing anything wrong but he was just

0:40 like all right let's let's go go go and

0:42 he thought he was doing the right thing

0:43 right he's like oh of course we would

0:45 use this automation platform for this

0:46 vendor that's why we probably bought it

0:49 right and he just had no idea and i

0:51 don't know how he would know

0:52 and again we probably weren't familiar

0:54 enough with the automation platform

0:55 because we're just going fast and this

0:57 is this one vendor implementation of

0:59 this one automation platform that we're

1:01 going to use and you know you might have

1:03 four vendors in the environment and you

1:04 have to be familiar not only with the

1:06 different syntax manually but then the

1:07 different automation platforms none of

1:09 them are doing the you know the

1:11 interfaces are all different the the

1:12 commands they used it

1:14 it's very confusing for a net ops person

1:16 in a multi-vendor environment even if

1:19 you have those

1:21 vendor automation tools for each

1:23 platform

1:24 it's so easy to make a mistake um you

1:27 know there's no like

1:29 there doesn't seem to be a glue that

1:31 holds all the infrastructure together

1:33 and the one i will not say single pane

1:35 of glass although i just did because it

1:37 turns my stomach but if you just had one

1:40 portal to interact with all that

1:43 another thing i've seen over the past

1:44 eight years in this industry is we're

1:46 kind of abstracting away the

1:48 intelligence from the actual boxes and

1:50 and going to these automation platforms

1:52 and controllers in it so it seems less

1:55 and less important

1:57 you know the intelligence is coming out

1:58 of the boxes so to speak and

2:01 and i think that's a good thing long

2:03 term but

2:04 i think if you have four different

2:06 brains like you you have a brain i have

2:08 a brain well if we had four brains right

2:11 one brain controlled your feet one brain

2:12 controlled your hands you know one brain

2:14 controlled your eyes

2:16 it would just be a mess and that's to me

2:18 how multi-vendor management feels like

2:20 whether it's an automated solution or

2:21 manually cli like

2:24 there's just no one

2:26 brain

2:27 that can just do the thing you want to

2:29 do

2:30 you then have to figure out okay what

2:31 box am i in what vendor is this are we

2:33 using automation are we not is it manual

2:37 it's

2:39 but this is this is good that the

2:40 industry is pushing and implementing

2:43 automation because i don't think long

2:45 term it it's just too difficult and two

2:48 prone errors and and we've seen the

2:50 error of our ways i think yeah

2:51 absolutely automation implemented well

2:54 and you know in a product that is

2:56 designed well it's definitely

2:58 you know the way to go to you know

3:01 reduce errors make things faster and

3:04 make things easier

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