What Is Networking Software?

Why is networking software needed?

As networks grow in complexity and importance, delivering business-critical applications to employees and customers, managing them and maintaining business agility become more challenging.

Networking software—along with the software-defined networks (SDNs) it creates—helps engineers respond to those challenges by enabling the creation of intent-based networks (IBNs).

IBNs reduce IT workload and deployment time, make more-efficient use of resources, and enhance agility. They deliver those benefits by automatically translating business objectives into custom network configurations.

What is software-defined networking (SDN)?

SDN is the practice of using software in place of hardware to define, deploy, and manage an enterprise network. The advantages of SDN are greater flexibility and agility, reduced workload through automation, and less downtime related to deployments.

What is intent-based networking (IBN)?

Generally speaking, IBN is the goal of SDN. As users, devices, and distributed applications have grown in number, the networking environment has become exponentially more complex. IBN transforms a hardware-centric, manual network into a controller-led network. The network can then capture business intent and translate it into policies that can be automated and applied consistently.

In what areas does networking software help to solve problems?

• Visibility. Networking software provides a complete picture of the network by aggregating network data in a visual interface. Using this visibility, IT teams leverage deep analytics and applied intelligence for troubleshooting, remediation, and assurance.
• Integrity and accuracy. Networking software makes automation and continuous monitoring possible. Those capabilities sharply reduce the chances of human error and help to cut unplanned network changes out of the process.
• Agility. Networking software helps IT teams build the agile, responsive networks that organizations reliant on cloud applications and services need. Such agility can help organizations enhance productivity, deliver for customers, and stay competitive.
• IT workloads. The central interface and automation capabilities of networking software can free IT teams from the repetitive, time-consuming work of configuring and updating policies across complex networks.
• Application and network hierarchy. Rigid network configurations place limits on applications and their deployments. But networks defined by networking software are by nature optimized and right-sized for applications. This results in better performance and flexibility and less waste of resources.
• Network security management..Complex networks have complex security needs. Networking software's automation and monitoring benefits extend to security as well.
• Hardware obsolescence. Networking software enables new features and capabilities to be installed on existing hardware. This makes hardware more flexible and extends its life span.