I love hearing real-life “how did I start my automation journey” stories. Here’s what one of ipSpace.net subscribers sent me:

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• Make peace with your network engineering soul and mind and open up to the possibility that the world has moved on to something else when it comes to consuming apps and software. Back in 2017, this was very hard on me :)

• Read all the materials / listen to webinars / practice in the lab all the topics from the automation courses and webinars on ipSpace¹ :)

• Use the knowledge from webinars and figure out how to structure your data and how to transform your data for machine processing

• Practice common software development workflows, this will give you exposure to the new tools of the trade, and a better understanding of why the networking is stuck in stone age from the perspective of a software developer working in an enterprise settings.

• Run pipelines against a build-and-release model

• Start small in lab settings and build a minimum viable product

• Find at least two early adopters within the team and spread knowledge and work with them.

• Start small with some of the basics tasks. You will be surprised to find out how many small tasks there are, and how many of them can be automated

• Be prepared and do not underestimate the push-back and the resistance from the ITIL based enterprise

• For large and extra-large enterprises with global footprint, the network as we used to know it, will take the route of the IBM mainframes.

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Willing to share your network automation story? Send me an email!