Why Cisco is making intent-based networking an open platform

The way businesses run their networks has remained virtually unchanged for more than two decades. But recently, this traditional way of running networks has become increasingly difficult, disconnected, and expensive. Modern networks need to be more integrated and more flexible.

To this end, we launched the most ambitious rethinking of the network in Cisco's history a year ago: we launched the Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA), an intent-based networking portfolio, and its core control software, DNA Center. By treating wired, wireless, and WAN devices as part of a unified architecture, we provide IT with a simpler, more convenient, and more cost-effective way to control its most valuable asset, the network infrastructure.

DNA Center enables network operators to respond quickly to business needs and security threats across their entire network, which means they don’t have to rely on time-consuming manual workflows to make changes to every part of the infrastructure.

Recently, Cisco introduced DNA Assurance, which provides high visibility and deep insights into everything that happens on the network and what happened before. When there is a problem to be solved, it allows network administrators to go back in time and see exactly what happened when the user or device encountered the problem. This makes troubleshooting and repairing incredibly fast and more proactive than it is now.

Now, DNA Center is an open platform

Now, Cisco is opening the network architecture itself to developers. The new open platform capabilities of DNA Center mean that Cisco partners and customers can use the powerful network-wide automation and assurance tools it provides. By transforming the network into a programmable platform, they will run IT and business applications more efficiently and securely, provide a better experience for their employees and customers, and extract the most value from the data collected by the network.

The first use of the new network platform will appear in the field of IT applications. ServiceNow, an IT service management system, has been integrated into DNA Center, which can automatically open a ticket and provide rich insights when DNA Center detects network problems. ServiceNow can then approve DNA Center to perform repair steps. DNA Center and ServiceNow can be used together to handle related issues faster and more accurately than separate systems.

Cisco partners are creating services for tasks such as software image updates (Accenture), power management (Presidio), physical security (Italtel Netwrapper), third-party equipment provisioning (HCL), and other IT solutions.

Cisco's intent-based networking platform is built on DNA Center.

It enables customers and partners to develop network-centric applications without having to program the devices directly.

As more customers learn about DNA Center's capabilities, its applicability will expand to line-of-business applications. For example, new platform capabilities will surface location data for network devices, which can be used to significantly improve logistics. In the healthcare field, location data for people and equipment can be used to save lives.

More innovative ideas are welcome

Cisco is proud to open up this rich and valuable resource to our customers. But intent-based networking is still in its early stages of evolution, and we want to help people understand (and create) new ways to make their assets work better for their business. The Cisco DevNet program was created with this in mind. It already has 500,000 developers, and we’re continually adding resources to help everyone grow. Cisco’s own services organization is also working hard to help business leaders get the most out of this new DNA Center platform.

The new platform capabilities of DNA Center are based on a flexible architecture that can help companies build new workflows through its control functions and data. We can't predict all the innovations that people will make based on this. But we are already shocked by what some of Cisco's early partners have done.

DNA Center is Cisco's most ambitious and flexible platform to date. It reflects Cisco's 30 years of deep knowledge of all areas of networking, all the rich relationships we have with customers and partners, and our engineers' vision for the future of networking. We hope it will bring you significant value.

Author: Scott Harrell, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Enterprise Networking Division