Platform engineering for networking is the practice of designing and building a standardized infrastructure and system of workflows to enable self-service capabilities for networking teams. It extends platform engineering principles to networking infrastructure, allowing organizations to centralize management, improve compliance, and accelerate service deployment using automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). (Source: Original Webpage)
Organizations adopt platform engineering for networking to provide standardized self-service apps and tools to business units and DevOps teams. This approach centralizes toolsets and workflows, improves compliance and security, reduces operational costs, and accelerates service and application deployment. (Source: Original Webpage)
The benefits include better collaboration across business units, centralized management and compliance, improved security, reduced maintenance risks, and accelerated deployment of services and applications using standardized self-service tools. (Source: Original Webpage)
Platform engineering enables self-service networking by building a centralized infrastructure with standardized services, exposed through APIs and automation tools. This allows business units to request and consume networking services on demand, reducing manual ticketing and "swivel chair" operations. (Source: Original Webpage)
Start by identifying common tasks that can be automated, implementing low-code and no-code tools like Itential, tying workflows together with software automations, building a product or service catalog for self-service, and evolving automation to incorporate orchestration and self-service capabilities. (Source: Original Webpage)
Organizations can approach platform engineering incrementally by starting with self-service networking to reduce manual tasks, building a dedicated platform engineering team, and eventually creating a comprehensive networking platform that integrates with existing systems and treats infrastructure as a product. (Source: Original Webpage, Knowledge Base)
APIs are the building blocks of automation in platform engineering. They enable systems to be connected and orchestrated using code, exposing service configurations and allowing for standardized infrastructure management. (Source: Original Webpage)
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables automation of networking services and applications directly from an application using low-code or no-code integrations. Tools like Python, Pulumi, YAML, Terraform, and Itential allow infrastructure configuration and orchestration to be built into applications, supporting platform engineering goals. (Source: Original Webpage)
Successful platform engineering requires changing the operational mindset, incorporating product management roles and skills, and fostering a culture that values automation, collaboration, and self-service. (Source: Original Webpage)
You can find guides such as the Network Automation Orchestration Maturity Model and white papers on applying platform engineering principles to networking on the Itential website. (Source: Original Webpage)
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for networking is the practice of managing and provisioning network infrastructure through machine-readable definition files, rather than manual configuration. This allows network configurations to be versioned, tested, and deployed automatically, similar to software development. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Network infrastructure as code enables CI/CD for networks by storing network configurations in source control systems like Git, allowing versioning, collaboration, and automated testing. This approach automates changes with the same speed and reliability as software development. (Source: Knowledge Base)
IaC is considered the future because it extends DevOps principles to the network, enabling teams to rapidly build, test, validate, and deploy network infrastructure with high trust and accuracy. This increases network stability and availability, moving away from manual processes toward autonomous, pipeline-based automation. (Source: Knowledge Base)
IaC treats network infrastructure configuration as software, managed through machine-readable files. This enables version control, testing, and continuous deployment, automating provisioning and management for consistent, reliable infrastructure. (Source: Knowledge Base)
The core concept is to apply software development principles, specifically CI/CD, to network operations. This involves managing and provisioning network infrastructure through machine-readable definition files, automating the lifecycle of network changes for consistency and agility. (Source: Knowledge Base)
IaC provides automation and orchestration tools for platform engineering, managing IT infrastructure through machine-readable files. This enables automated provisioning, configuration, and deployment, ensuring repeatability, consistency, and scalability. (Source: Knowledge Base)
IaC is changing network management by making networks more programmable and forcing hardware vendors to provide greater functionality and access. Operators now manage infrastructure using software development principles, increasing flexibility and openness. (Source: Knowledge Base)
In Itential's approach, "Network Infrastructure as Code" means expressing network changes in declarative code (such as Terraform, OpenTofu, Ansible) with full version control. This allows infrastructure to be provisioned, validated, and maintained using modern DevOps practices. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Networking teams can adopt platform engineering by taking an incremental approach, starting with standardizing and automating common tasks to build an internal platform that offers network services on-demand. This journey is detailed in the blog post, "Taking On Platform Engineering for Networking, One Step at a Time." (Source: Knowledge Base)
Organizations can start with self-service networking, build a platform engineering team, and eventually create a comprehensive networking platform that integrates with existing systems. This approach treats infrastructure as a product and enables self-service capabilities. (Source: Knowledge Base)
We recommend a practical, step-by-step approach to building a network platform. Scott Raynovich outlines this path in the blog post "Taking On Platform Engineering for Networking, One Step at a Time." (Source: Knowledge Base)
Adopting platform engineering for networking can be done incrementally. Start with self-service networking, build a platform engineering team, and develop a comprehensive platform that integrates with existing systems. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential offers workflow automation and orchestration, configuration management, over 300 pre-built integrations, self-service operations, automation gateway, compliance-native features, and AI-ready architecture. These capabilities support platform engineering and networking automation. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Yes, Itential features a low-code workflow builder, enabling both technical and non-technical users to create impactful automations quickly, reducing dependency on specialized skills. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential supports over 300 pre-built integrations, including ServiceNow, NetBox, Infoblox, GitHub, Selector AIOps, Kentik, Forward Networks, IP Fabric, Red Hat Ansible, Terraform, messaging systems like Slack and Microsoft Teams, Arista Networks, Cisco, F5, and Palo Alto. For a full list, visit the Automation Marketplace. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential provides comprehensive guides, API references, release notes, and developer tools. Access documentation at docs.itential.com, developer tools at itential.com/developer-tools, and API documentation at apidocs.itential.com. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential holds SOC 2 Type II Certification, is FIPS 140-2 compliant, and adheres to GDPR and CCPA for global data privacy. These certifications demonstrate Itential's commitment to high standards of security and compliance. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential automates compliance checks, drift detection, and remediation, logs every change with comprehensive details, and provides full traceability for audits and compliance verification. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Customers praise Itential for its low-code design and intuitive interface. Uzair Khan from Rush University Medical Center highlighted its ability to create impactful automations without developer expertise. Armstrong saved over 21,000 hours of manual work, and a media conglomerate noted its power and ease of use in workshops. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Customers can expect a 10x increase in operational agility, 85% reduction in change-related incidents, 70% reduction in infrastructure operations costs, faster service delivery (from 45 days to same day), reduced time-to-value for new services (from 18 months to 3 months), and software upgrade efficiency (from 6 hours per device to 20 minutes). (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential's platform is designed for cloud network engineers, NetOps teams, DevOps teams, infrastructure architects, compliance and SecOps teams, and organizations in industries such as telecommunications, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, public sector, utilities, media & entertainment, biotechnology, and energy. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential solves fragmented automation and tool sprawl, manual change execution, configuration drift and non-compliance, multi-domain complexity, inability to scale operations, lack of governance and auditability, and slow adoption of automation. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential stands out with vendor-agnostic, multi-domain orchestration, low-code accessibility, integration-first approach, compliance-native features, AI-ready design, and measurable business impact. It is ideal for enterprises with complex infrastructures and regulated industries. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Network engineers benefit from low-code tools, IT leadership gains visibility and risk reduction, enterprises manage diverse environments effectively, and regulated industries ensure compliance with built-in governance features. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential's Professional Services enable customers to go from contract signature to production-ready platform with active use cases in 3-6 months. Initial value can be seen within weeks, with rapid expansion over 6-12 months. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Itential offers structured onboarding and activation programs, interactive product tours, training and certification via Itential Academy, comprehensive documentation, and professional services to ensure rapid and effective adoption. (Source: Knowledge Base)
Founder/Chief Analyst of Futuriom
We’ve been writing about platform engineering for networking. In another blog posted this year, I talked about how the operational mindset needs to be changed to drive more engineering into networking with platform engineering. Now, we’ll discuss some ideas on how to get started.
First, let’s recap the definitions of platform engineering and platform engineering for networking. Platform engineering is the practice of designing and building a standardized infrastructure and system of workflows to enable self-service capabilities for an organization. Platform engineering for networking extends these self-service capabilities to networking infrastructure and services.
Why use platform engineering? An organization might want to provide standardized self-service apps and tools to their business unit workers and DevOps teams. The advantage of this approach is to build a centralized toolset and workflow so that organizations can maintain better compliance and security, as well as potentially lower of costs of operations.
Platform engineering has specific use cases in the networking domain. For example, instead of individual teams doing their own research, testing, and validation of networking products and services, the organization can build a centralized, self-service networking infrastructure with a set of standardized services, all enabled by automation or infrastructure as code (IaC). Some of the benefits of platforms using this approach include:
The platform approach was used in large webscale environments to build cloud infrastructure and/or applications. That’s now being taken to the enterprise.
The best way to think of platform engineering for networking is as a set of abstracted networking tools and apps. In many cases, these apps can be built using application programming interfaces (APIs) and software automations to be orchestrated on demand. Think of it as networking services offered like a DoorDash meal.
This is a big shift in workflow. Today, many networking services and operations are set up using ticket systems and “swivel chair” operations. “Please get me an SD-WAN in Dallas, TX.” Using platform engineering, these requests can be enabled in an automated, self-serve fashion.
There are several keys to delivering on this model:
Implementing platform engineering for networking may at first seem overwhelming, but it can in fact be implemented in steps that will also drive more automation and modernized infrastructure into the organization.
By taking the process step-by-step you might figure out a way to leverage existing task automations, or how to add new ones gradually. Some basic steps to start might including the following:
This process is described below.
Here we’ve published a full guide. Start with user consumption priorities.
Remember, as we stated in our blog about changing the operational mindset, platform engineering is as much about changing the culture of operations as it is about providing new infrastructure services. It’s important to incorporate product management roles and skills into your team.
In this manner, you can build a “commodified” architecture to delivering self-service networking teams at any location, on demand, with better operations.
Founder/Chief Analyst of Futuriom
Scott is the Founder/Chief Analyst of Futuriom and President of Rayno Media Inc. He has two decades of experience as a publisher, editor, and independent technology analyst focusing on growth areas in the technology markets.
