Brocade open network automation platform

Brocade announced Brocade Workflow Composer, a new server-based network automation platform that enables enterprises and cloud service providers to improve their IT operations and drive greater business agility. It's  Workflow Composer provides DevOps-style Network Automation for provisioning, validation, troubleshooting and remediation of multivendor networks -- while integrating with workflows across multiple IT domains for end-to-end automation.

As companies move to digitize their business, they need an underlying network architecture, including automation, which supports business agility. This New IP architecture enables the network to become a platform for innovation and for developing, delivering and securing new applications.

According to a global CIO Survey 1, 75 percent of respondents stated that the network is impacting their organizations' ability to achieve business goals. The lack of network automation and integration of the network with other IT operations and tool chains is the single biggest inhibitor to capitalizing on digitization.

Automation has been a long-standing hallmark of Brocade solutions, starting with storage networking in 1995. In 2009, Brocade extended its automation leadership with the industry's first Ethernet fabric comprised of Brocade VDX switches featuring Brocade VCS Fabric technology. Earlier this year, Brocade expanded its Data Centre Fabric portfolio with Brocade IP Fabrics, an open, standards-based design that leverages cloud-proven BGP-based architectures, with automation delivered by the new Brocade Workflow Composer.  More recently, Brocade acquired Stackstorm an innovator in event-driven automation software, to help bring DevOps-style automation capabilities to the network. StackStorm technology is now a foundational element of Brocade Workflow Composer.

"Embarking on the digital transformation journey can be overwhelming for most organizations requiring changes to the network infrastructure, organizational and operational models and new skill sets. However, when broken down into digestible and evolutionary steps, organizations can navigate the journey at their own pace," said Jason Nolet, senior vice president, Switching, Routing and Analytics Products Group, Brocade. "One of the first places to start is to bring a new approach to network automation. With Brocade Workflow Composer, Brocade is bridging IT silos and enabling end-to-end automation of cross-functional IT workflows."

Key Features of Brocade Workflow Composer

Unlike other network automation solutions that are often monolithic, proprietary and only address the network, Brocade Workflow Composer features:

• Software-driven lifecycle management. Brocade Workflow Composer automates the entire network life-cycle ranging from initial provisioning and validation to troubleshooting and auto-remediation.
•  Cross-domain integration. Brocade Workflow Composer leverages customizable integration points to recognize events from any network device, cross-domain platform or application, and then invoke action by other tools and applications to execute an automated workflow. Brocade Workflow Composer provides more than 1,900 customizable integration points for popular platforms and applications such as Linux, Windows, vSphere, AWS, Azure, CloudFoundry, OpenStack, Docker, Kubernetes, CoreOS, FireEye, New Relic, Sensu, Splunk, ChatOps, PagerDuty and VictorOps.
• Flexible workflow automation for multivendor networks. Brocade Workflow Composer enables IT agility and choice with turnkey, customizable or do-it-yourself network workflow automation -- all supported in multivendor network environments.
•  DevOps-inspired methodologies. Workflow execution is provided by the Brocade Workflow Composer's open, extensible, microservices-based framework. This framework leverages StackStorm, a variety of other popular, open source DevOps technologies, as well as a thriving community for peer collaboration and innovation.

"The Python library from Brocade Workflow Composer enabled us to decrease our development time from months to weeks, which empowered us to focus on delivering the highest levels of performance and availability to our customers," said Tim Harrison, product architect and technology advocate, Q9 Networks, Canada's leading provider of outsourced data center infrastructure, which received early access to Brocade Workflow Composer. "As we continue to optimize and deploy new cloud-based services to support our customers' enterprise cloud requirements, Q9 continues to leverage Brocade Workflow Composer to improve business agility through network automation."

Organizations that need help in transforming their network engineering and operations team can utilize Brocade NetDev Professional Services. Staffed with experienced network software developers, Brocade NetDev leverages solutions from Brocade and other vendors to help customers accelerate their automation journey.

Packaging and Availability

Acquired by Brocade in March 2016, StackStorm built a thriving open source project and community which Brocade will continue to support and contribute to under the StackStorm name. StackStorm cross-domain integrations are available today on GITHUB.

Brocade Workflow Composer leverages StackStorm open source technology as well as other organic and open source technologies, while adding enterprise-class features and support. A trial version of Brocade Workflow Composer is available today. The product is currently scheduled to be released in the third quarter of 2016.