Data federation is the process of aggregating and harmonizing data from multiple sources—such as network controllers, orchestrators, inventory management systems, and performance systems—without copying all data into a central master database. Instead, federation creates a meta-map of systems and queries them in real-time during workflow execution, ensuring up-to-date and consistent information for automation processes. [Source]
Data integration and federation are critical because network data is scattered across various systems (ITSM, IPAM, inventory, CMDBs, etc.). Federation provides a unified, real-time view of all network data, enabling automation workflows to access necessary information from multiple sources without replacing existing systems. This is essential for scaling automation efforts and ensuring automations always use the most current data. [Source]
Traditional models rely on copying large amounts of data into a central master database, which can lead to data quality, timeliness, and synchronization issues. Itential's federation approach avoids these problems by querying relevant sources of truth in real-time during automation workflows, ensuring automations always use the latest, most accurate data without creating inconsistencies. [Source]
Organizations face challenges such as tool sprawl, data silos, manual change execution, configuration drift, multi-domain complexity, and lack of governance. As networks grow in complexity and scale, managing data across multiple controllers, orchestrators, and management systems becomes increasingly difficult without a unified approach. [Source]
Itential's federation layer aggregates and harmonizes data from multiple sources, allowing users and systems to interact with a global list of device types and network entities, regardless of the underlying controller or orchestrator. This eliminates the need for multiple interfaces and enables a single API for network operations, simplifying automation and reducing manual effort. [Source]
In large networks, a single device (e.g., a switch) may be represented in multiple systems—EMS, SDN controller, inventory, and ordering systems—each with its own data model. Federation links these views, so operations teams can treat the device as a single entity, simplifying management and automation across domains. [Source]
Federation enables real-time access to accurate data, reducing errors caused by outdated or inconsistent information. It also allows automation to scale across large, multi-domain environments by providing a unified data model, supporting use cases involving 100,000+ devices. [Source]
Data integration typically involves consolidating data from multiple sources into a single repository, while data federation provides a unified, virtualized view of data across sources without physically moving or duplicating it. Federation enables real-time access and harmonization, which is essential for dynamic network automation. [Source]
Chasing a single source of truth is impractical because network data is distributed across many systems, each serving different operational needs. Federation allows automations to access live data from all relevant sources, ensuring accuracy and eliminating the need for constant data synchronization. [Source]
Itential abstracts APIs and logic from different systems into unified workflows, enabling seamless coordination across network, cloud, security, and IT infrastructure. This allows organizations to automate end-to-end processes that span multiple domains and tools. [Source]
The Itential Automation Platform offers workflow automation and orchestration, configuration management, over 300 pre-built integrations, self-service operations, an automation gateway, compliance-native features, and AI-ready architecture. These features enable organizations to automate complex, multi-domain environments efficiently. [Source]
Yes, Itential supports over 300 pre-built integrations with ITSM, cloud, security, SD-WAN, CI/CD, observability tools, and network controllers. This integration-first approach ensures compatibility with existing tools and smooth adoption. [Source]
Itential features a low-code, drag-and-drop workflow builder that enables both technical and non-technical users to create impactful automations quickly, reducing dependency on specialized coding skills. [Source]
Itential includes SOC 2 Type II certification, FIPS 140-2 compliance, GDPR and CCPA adherence, role-based access control (RBAC), single sign-on (SSO), encryption for data in transit and at rest, audit trails, and automated compliance checks for standards like PCI, HIPAA, NIST, and ISO. [Source]
Itential logs every orchestration execution, including pre/post validation results, approval chains, and timestamps, providing full traceability for audits and compliance verification. [Source]
Itential provides comprehensive technical documentation, including guides, API references, and release notes, at docs.itential.com. Additional resources include developer tools and API documentation. [Source]
Key integrations include ServiceNow, NetBox, Infoblox, GitHub, Selector AIOps, Kentik, Forward Networks, IP Fabric, Red Hat Ansible, Terraform, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Arista Networks, Cisco, F5, and Palo Alto. For a full list, visit the Automation Marketplace. [Source]
Itential's AI-ready architecture integrates with AI platforms, enabling governed and auditable actions based on AI insights. The FlowAI agent builder and MCP control layer translate AI intent into secure, policy-driven workflows. [Source]
The Automation Gateway centralizes and manages all automation assets, including scripts and playbooks, from a single interface, making it easier to reuse and govern automation across the organization. [Source]
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), and reduced time-to-value for new services (from 18 months to 3 months). [Source]
Itential 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]
Itential addresses fragmented automation and tool sprawl, manual change execution, configuration drift, multi-domain complexity, inability to scale operations, lack of governance and auditability, and slow adoption of automation due to coding barriers. [Source]
Itential's Configuration Validation application continuously compares device and system states against defined baselines, automatically identifies drift, and enforces governance standards within every workflow, ensuring ongoing compliance. [Source]
Organizations can go from contract signature to a production-ready platform with active use cases in 3-6 months. Initial value is often seen within weeks, with rapid expansion of automation capabilities over the next 6-12 months. [Source]
Customers have praised Itential for its low-code design and intuitive interface. For example, Armstrong saved over 21,000 hours of manual work, and Rush University Medical Center highlighted the ability to create impactful automations without needing to be developers. [Source]
Itential's low-code platform, 300+ pre-built integrations, and self-service catalogs enable organizations to scale operations without proportional increases in staff, with customers reporting 80-90% reduction in manual effort. [Source]
Industries such as telecommunications, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, public sector, utilities, media & entertainment, biotechnology, and energy have successfully adopted Itential for network automation and orchestration. [Source]
Customer stories include Armstrong World Industries, Rush University Medical Center, and a multinational biotech company, all of whom achieved significant operational improvements with Itential. More stories are available on the Itential customers page. [Source]
Itential offers a structured onboarding program, a 6-8 week activation program, interactive product tours, training and certification through Itential Academy, and comprehensive documentation to help users master the platform. [Source]
Technical documentation is available at docs.itential.com, and developer tools can be found at Itential's developer tools page. API documentation is also available at apidocs.itential.com. [Source]
Support options include a customer portal, professional services, customer success programs, and access to FAQs and documentation. [Source]
You can read more about Itential's approach, including strategy, business value, and technical deep-dives, on the Itential blog. [Source]
You can get started by requesting a demo, taking a test drive, or exploring interactive product tours on the Itential website. [Source]
Itential holds SOC 2 Type II certification, is FIPS 140-2 compliant, and adheres to GDPR and CCPA for data privacy. [Source]
Itential supports on-prem and air-gapped deployments, ensuring data remains within secure environments and enabling compliance with mandates like STIGs. [Source]
You can download the white paper "Itential Automation Platform: Network Integration, Federation & Automation" from the Itential website for a deeper dive into these capabilities. [Source]
Company ‐ Itential
Table of Contents
As automation becomes pervasive in organizations, users are starting to recognize the impact that automation can make in saving time and money as well as improving accuracy. Due to this, automation use cases are evolving from simple changes to more complex operations. By automating the more complex processes, organizations can recognize significantly greater savings in both effort and in time to complete the process.
The challenge that many organizations face is how to utilize their automation tools to be as effective in automating complex, multi-domain use cases as they were in automating simple changes. The challenges are in two dimensions – complexity and scale. As complexity increases, a single tool may lack the ability to perform automations consistently across domains. For example, across traditional IP infrastructure (CLI-based), cloud infrastructure, and application layers. As scale increases, techniques like scripting become more challenging to use effectively. This is becoming clear in scenarios where the number of devices and controllers is skyrocketing, such as SD-WAN or Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). With the growth of these technologies, and others such as SDN, NFV, and orchestration – organizations have deployed a wide variety of systems, controllers, and functions to interact with the network.
While it may be possible to connect to all of these systems, the problem becomes how to organize the data that comes from these systems so that users (humans) and other systems (machines) can interact with the network in ways that are simple, predictable, and repeatable. For example, information about a single device, such as a network switch (we’ll call it Switch1) could be represented in multiple places, such as an EMS, an SDN controller, a fault management system, an inventory system, and an ordering system. To each of these systems, Switch1 is a unique separate entity than all of the other representations of Switch1, but to the operations team member, all of that data is related to one switch (Switch1). Software based systems, on their own, typically are not smart enough to know that each of the systems is actually talking about the same network switch. In order to treat Switch1 like a single entity, and not a collection of separate views of that entity, some mechanism needs to be implemented to link all of those views together.
There is another aspect to the same problem – there may be multiple EMSs, controllers, and orchestrators that are managing the same types of network entities. Going back to the previous example, in a large network environment there could be multiple systems responsible for managing switches, such as an orchestrator, an OpenStack instance, an EMS, or an SDN controller. All of these systems are managing the same type of entity (a network switch), but each one represents the data about that switch in a unique way. As the number of controllers grows, the complexity of managing the network by logging in to each controller to make changes becomes significant.
Data federation is the ability to provide aggregation and harmonization of data from multiple sources, such as network controllers, orchestrators, inventory management systems, and performance systems.
The method that a federated system aggregates data is different than the way traditional management systems collected information; which typically relied on copying massive amounts of data to create a master database. The problems associated with this older approach included timeliness of the data, data quality issues, and ongoing synchronization challenges.
Federation overcomes these issues and accommodates the rapid changes to the network by creating a meta-map of the systems and then querying those systems in real-time during execution of workflows or other business logic.
Without federation, the NetOps team must contend with a growing, massive disorganized list of elements. Instead of focusing on how to automate the changes, they need to have a reliable method on how to find the right resource and reach it, along the correct path and syntax to communicate through the scripting system, controller, or EMS.
The Itential Automation Platform (IAP) was designed to address the challenges of complex, multi-domain automation scenarios by implementing a federation layer within the platform.
With federation, users and systems can utilize the federation system to easily do things like:
We’ve seen customers leverage Itential’s Automation Platform to go far beyond simple automation cases and deploy automations for complex use cases that address large, multi-domain environments (100,000+ devices) by utilizing the data federation capabilities of the platform. As new technologies move beyond our customers’ labs and into production, we are looking forward to further benefits that federation will provide.
To learn more about the automation capabilities of Itential and see how functionality like federation can greatly simplify the operational challenges associated with large, distributed multi-domain and multi-vendor networks, download the white paper, “Itential Automation Platform: Network Integration, Federation & Automation.”
Company ‐ Itential
Itential is the only automation platform built to support both network and cloud, making it easy for enterprise organizations to maintain network compliance, reduce manual operations, and simplify network management. The Itential Automation Platform is a low-code cloud-native SaaS solution that seamlessly connects IT systems with network technologies for end-to-end network configuration, compliance, and automation.
