Network teams, deeply engaged with the daily changes and mechanisms of their unique network, understand the general state at a given point in time - especially if they have the right visibility tools in place!
However, the network underpins the entire business, and thus network state is relevant across the organization, not just to network teams. There is, in particular, a need to understand how the network state affects outcomes - the risk and impact of the network state on users and applications is vital business information.
Business leaders and adjacent teams (for example, security or operations) acknowledging the relevance of the network begets the need for clear, condensed, and relevant network reports.
Simply put, if something is going on in the network, what impact does it have on my job and the work I need to do?
These users won't necessarily have the same requirements of network reports as network engineers (nor will they understand the intricacies of specific network tech) so simply passing on large amounts of network data isn't an actionable solution.
This means engineers have to spend time understanding the requirements of different users with different perspectives and priorities, and manually collate and correlate different inputs from the network. And after all that effort, these ad-hoc reporting solutions might still not meet these requirements, or be something that you can replicate regularly.
This mismatch of expectations and needs results in frustrating bottlenecks and friction between teams, not to mention the time and focus dedicated to translating specific network information to satisfy requests from different teams.
IP Fabric solves this frustration by automatically generating a network-wide analysis report of your network at a specific point in time, providing an invaluable resource to respond quickly and accurately to these requests for information.
This report includes summary information and perceived risks that may affect outcomes in a digestible format. Best of all, this is instantly accessible with a click, with no manual inputs needed. See the 6-second process here:
The cost and time of doing this manually would mean you can't just create these reports whenever you want. With a dynamic enterprise-scale network, regular reporting is crucial to ensure your understanding of the network is up to date so you can make well-informed decisions.