Network operations teams rely on highly specialized tools developed by individual vendors designed to address particular problems. The result? Most enterprises have 10+ Network Operations applications in place and they don’t talk to each other—which means that network operations engineers spend an exhaustive and unnecessary amount of time toggling between applications and sifting through information as they work to resolve tickets.

Did you hear about the change window that went exactly as planned? No? That’s because the odds of winning the PowerBall without buying a ticket are better than the odds of executing a change window on a global network without a glitch. What about the story of the tier one network engineer that diagnosed and resolved an ACL in seconds? That one also seems as mythical as staying friends with your ex—but it’s not.

In network operations, it’s never the same day twice. Most network engineers love this aspect, but it has a dark side. The best plans often fall to the wayside—in an instant work stops and firefighting begins. In the last year, I’ve been part of a whole-day colo move, diagnosed an outage in the middle of the night, and resolved a slow performance issue. I know what the networking operations experience is like, and I know how much better it can be.

Network security is a top-of-mind concern for business executives and technical leaders alike. The costs of a major breach can range in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and it can take years for companies’ reputations to recover. But when most people think about network security, network modeling, visualization, and path analysis probably don’t spring to mind. We believe it should.

Speak with networking ops and engineering leads anywhere, and you’ll hear what I frequently hear: “The way my team actually spends their time is the opposite of how they feel they could best spend it.” The passion they have for their team and the network they keep running is clearly at odds with a frustrating feeling that they can’t get ahead.