Following its recent acquisition of StackStorm, Brocade has announced Brocade Workflow Composer, a new server-based network automation platform that takes a workflow-centric approach to bringing network automation and agility into IT operations with cross-domain workflows. Brocade Workflow Composer is built on an open, extensible, microservices-based framework that leverages the power of StackStorm technology, DevOps methodologies, popular open source technologies, industry best practices, and the peer collaboration and innovation of a thriving technical community.
Yarob Sakhnini, Regional Director MEMA at Brocade says, “To unleash new levels of business innovation and competitive advantage, customers are embracing digital transformation. Success depends on building an agile business. In the digital era, IT agility is key to business agility. However, IT infrastructure is only as agile as its least agile component. The lack of network automation and the inability of the network to align with IT operations and tool chains today is the single biggest inhibitor to an organisation’s ability to capitalise on digitalisation. Brocade Workflow Composer is a unique network automation platform designed to address these requirements, enabling cross-domain workflows to bridge silos and enabling split-second, cross-domain automation to improve business agility.”
A workflow-centric approach to automation increases business agility
Organisations that have embraced the DevOps movement understand that business agility cannot be achieved simply by automating one domain within the services delivery chain. When operating in functional silos, execution of tasks that span multiple domains can take days or weeks. The functional domains—such as the network, compute, storage, and applications—must be stitched together to ensure that the transition from one function to another optimises the delivery of services.
The way to do this is through workflow-centric, cross-domain automation. This approach enables on-demand services delivery and business agility by breaking down the cross-functional silos and allowing the network and all other domains to programmatically participate in the entire services delivery chain. Since a workflow is a collection of tasks that are often executed manually and routinely, it serves as a strong foundation for developing automation.
Workflows can be single-domain, such as provisioning a network device, or cross-domain, such as detecting a network device issue and automatically creating and assigning a help desk ticket to a network operator. With cross-domain workflow automation, the manual steps of detecting an issue, identifying the potential cause, performing remediation actions and even creating a trouble ticket or paging a senior engineer can all be eliminated. As a result, IT can minimise human-induced errors, improve operational efficiency and reduce time-to-resolution.
“Embarking on the digital transformation journey can be overwhelming for most organisations requiring changes to the network infrastructure, organisational and operational models and new skill sets. However, when broken down into digestible and evolutionary steps, organisations can navigate the journey at their own pace,” said Jason Nolet, senior vice president, Switching, Routing and Analytics Products Group, Brocade. “One of the first places to start is to bring a new approach to network automation. With Brocade Workflow Composer, Brocade is bridging IT silos and enabling end-to-end automation of cross-functional IT workflows.”
Key features of Brocade Workflow Composer
The Brocade Workflow Composer features:
- Software-driven lifecycle management.Brocade Workflow Composer automates the entire network lifecycle ranging from initial provisioning and validation to troubleshooting and auto-remediation.
- Cross-domain integration.Brocade Workflow Composer leverages customisable integration points to recognise events from any network device, cross-domain platform or application, and then invoke action by other tools and applications to execute an automated workflow.
- Flexible workflow automation for multivendor networks.Brocade Workflow Composer enables IT agility and choice with turnkey, customisable or do-it-yourself network workflow automation — all supported in multivendor network environments.
- DevOps-inspired methodologies. Workflow execution is provided by the Brocade Workflow Composer’s open, extensible, microservices-based framework. This framework leverages StackStorm, a variety of other popular, open source DevOps technologies, as well as a thriving community for peer collaboration and innovation.
