Product Overview of NetBrain
NetBrain is a pioneering network automation and visibility platform designed to transform complex network operations into efficient, automated workflows. Founded in 2004, NetBrain has established itself as a market leader in automating network troubleshooting, change management, and assessments.
Key Functionality
No-Code Network Automation
NetBrain’s core offering is its no-code network automation platform, which eliminates the need for scripting or coding. This platform captures the knowledge and expertise of network engineers through a graphical interface, making it sharable and executable across the entire team. This approach allows subject matter experts to digitize their troubleshooting, change, and assessment processes without requiring programming skills.
Automation Library
The NetBrain Network Automation Library serves as a centralized hub for storing, sharing, and reusing automated network intelligence. This library includes hundreds of pre-built automations for common network assessments, such as network design, fault tolerance, network performance, compliance, application health, cloud assessment, and SDN monitoring. Engineers can continuously expand this library by capturing their unique troubleshooting and assessment knowledge as no-code intents.
Enhanced Data Gathering and Analysis
NetBrain’s platform enables enhanced data gathering by querying network devices and storing desired command outputs as variables. It applies human intelligence to parse and analyze device data, providing human-level diagnosis when results are outside desired parameters. The platform supports multi-vendor, multi-format (CLI, API, SNMP) querying and parsing, ensuring compatibility across various network environments.
Continuous Network Assessment and Visualization
The platform offers real-time, continuous assessments of network performance, health, security, compliance, and utilization. It includes automation dashboards that provide visual confirmation of network connectivity, performance, and status. These dashboards are intent-powered, allowing users to populate them with timely assessments from their library of no-code Network Intents. Features such as Geo-map charts and color-coded assessment results enhance troubleshooting and collaboration.
Troubleshooting and Outage Prevention
NetBrain automates troubleshooting workflows, allowing engineers to capture and reuse resolutions for similar issues. The platform auto-diagnoses external events and incidents, assessing and mapping trouble areas before engineers begin working. It also includes Triple Defense change protection to prevent unintended network consequences and ensures continuous assessment for configuration, performance, and design drift to enforce best practices and prevent avoidable outages.
Hybrid Network Support
NetBrain supports hybrid networks, including edge-to-cloud environments. It integrates with major ITSM systems and provides a real-time hybrid network digital twin, which includes devices, cloud-based services, and the intended goals of the network. This comprehensive view helps in managing networks from the top down, focusing on results rather than individual device details.
Collaboration and Scalability
The platform fosters collaboration by allowing teams to share and reuse automation intents. It provides role-based dashboards that can be shared with internal teams or clients, promoting informed decision-making. The scalable implementation ensures that automations can be easily replicated across any number of devices, making it suitable for large and complex network environments.
Benefits
- Operational Efficiency: NetBrain automates more than 95% of all network tickets and prevents over 50% of network problems before they impact production.
- Reduced MTTR: By automating troubleshooting and change management, NetBrain significantly reduces the Mean Time To Repair (MTTR).
- Risk Mitigation: The platform minimizes the risk associated with human error, which is a common cause of network outages.
- Informed Decision-Making: Real-time dashboards and continuous assessments provide actionable insights, enabling IT organizations to make informed decisions and drive innovation.
In summary, NetBrain’s no-code network automation platform is designed to streamline network operations, enhance collaboration, and provide comprehensive visibility into network performance and health. Its extensive automation library, continuous assessment capabilities, and real-time visualization tools make it an indispensable tool for network architects, operators, and engineers.