Traditional Network Management software is not able to keep up with the demands on the network operators. Every year, the underlying hardware keeps evolving (e.g. Fabric path, SDN controllers), the number of networking vendors increase and the communication methods (E.g. CLI, API, SNMP, NETCONF) keep changing. In many companies, the developer who wrote the expect or TCL scripts left the company and every simple change becomes a new project. Ultimately, network operators are resorting to spreadsheets to maintain VLAN numbers, Router credentials etc.
A Network Service Orchestrator uses the concept of abstraction to simplify the task of configuring multiple network elements. For example, let’s say the operator has to create a VLAN for a specific application. In the traditional approach, the operator has to login to each and every router and configure using CLI or GUI. On the other hand, a Network Service Orchestrator automatically discovers the network topology and all the dependancies for creating a VLAN. It auto generates the CLI or API calls for each vendor device and executes an atomic transaction across all devices.
