Welcome to the NetSpyGlass Blog

Welcome and thanks for stopping by to take in our inaugural blog post! For NetSpyGlass this blog represents a journey into the murky waters of defining a novel solution category. Our slightly long-winded positioning statement, i.e. “Pragmatic Perspectives on Script Defined Automation of Network Performance Monitoring” is admittedly a bit much to absorb at first glance but it precisely defines our aims and goals for this blog. Nonetheless, I will make no assumptions here other than this positioning statement deserves some kind of parsed explanation. So here goes.

Firstly, we intend that our postings and resulting discussions have a very practical focus on real-world challenges that networking professionals encounter when monitoring network performance. Secondly, a quick Google search on “script defined automation” (quotes included) returns – no results. So, you might rightly ask – what does this mean? It is very much our goal to socialize a point of view that automation via scripts represents an approach to conquering network complexity whose time has finally arrived. And lastly, if software-defined networks (SDN) caused disruption to the traditional architectural approach to building networks, then perhaps script-defined automation will have an analogous role in disrupting how network professionals approach building infrastructure to monitor the performance of their networks.

So, putting all of this together, we are excited about starting a conversation that explores how automation through scripting can enable network professionals to overcome the complexity of monitoring networks that are large, growing and constantly changing to support the needs of the organizations that depend upon them. The introduction of automation into the networking professional’s workflow is hardly a new idea. However, among networking professionals, the adoption of programmatic approaches to automation has yet to parallel a similar adoption of programmatic automation among IT administration professionals. This could be attributable to a lack of commercially available platforms and tooling specifically targeting network professionals. Or it could be attributable to much more complex factors such as professional culture, organizational inertia, etc. Regardless, the important point is that networking professionals have a software-defined future ahead of them. This is a future in which opportunities to conquer complexity have never been better. Our aim with this blog is to highlight these opportunities through practical examples of powerful, flexible and highly effective automation practices that leverage a scripting approach…and specifically, Python scripting. So, let the conversation begin! Share your thoughts below.