InSync Technologies makes network automation a reality

InSync Co-Founders Sahan Hannadige and Sudeera Mudugamuwa

Businesses today are heavily disrupted by innovative business models and new entrances. Superior customer experience, market readiness and responsiveness have become increasingly important.

To stay ahead of the game, businesses need to be responsive, agile and innovative. This is where businesses opt to leverage digital technologies to stay superior. And IT as a function is under the spot light to take businesses through this journey of transformation. Unfortunately, IT workforces today are mostly occupied in routine tasks and daily operations leaving limited or no time at all for innovation. This is true especially in the networking domain primarily due to rigid nature of networks that works in silo.

Founded by two veterans in the networking industry, InSync pioneers network automation which is a relatively new domain in Sri Lanka. Their invention in network automation is the ‘InSync Automation Engine’ that automates routine tasks of network engineers throughout networks lifecycle increasing business efficiency and agility. Now the routine tasks are taken care of, IT workforce can focus their productive time on innovation and business enablement. 

“InSync’s vision for network automation goes beyond automating routine tasks,” says InSync co-founder Sahan Hannadige. “We envision network automation to transform how networks are built and manage. We foresee networks evolving to ‘self-run networks’, where a business user can easily build and run network services without the need of an expert. This is where networks will be self-configurable, self-managed with a piece of intelligent software that’s easily understood by a business user. It’s going to change the role of network engineers and integrators drastically as it’s expected to simplify networks to gain efficiencies and reduce operational complexities,” added Hannadige.

Network is the backbone that connects your workforce, customers, suppliers, applications and machines with each other from any geo-location in a secure manner. It comprises of on-prem, hybrid and cloud-based hardware and software from multiple vendors that works in harmony to cater business requirements. Yet, network devices work in silo, fail to dynamically change itself and to provide granular visibility of its state. Ability to manure changes on a timely, consistent and precise manner is still challenging and this is where network automation plays a crucial role when it comes to network agility. “Network programmability has changed how people look at networks,” says InSync co-founder Sudeera Mudugamuwa. “Enabled by new concepts like NETCONF and YANG and enriched by programming languages like python, networks can now be provisioned through simple business portals and is capable enough to capture critical insights in a meaningful manner to present a business view. InSync automation engine incorporate latest developments in networking field and fulfils the role of a vendor agnostic tool that supports both conventional and software defined networks for routine task automation. Although achieving a fully autonomous network is still far away, we are excited with our starting point that can save a lot of productive man hours for innovation,” added Mudugamuwa.

InSync’s approach to network automation identifies three stages of network lifecycle namely roll out stage, manage stage and redesign stage. And their python-based automation engine supports use-cases throughout the three stages for service provisioning, granular visibility and for audits. Routine task automation and health-checks going to be essential for businesses with large number of branches, complex networks and large number of routine transactions to gain competitive advantage.

As network automation is still an emerging field, InSync plans build awareness and educate engineers on the power of network automation and how it can bring benefits to businesses. With this thought, InSync recently conducted a training for its clients on ‘python for network automation’ – a technical training targeting network engineers to kick start their journey towards network automation. Training was attended by engineering resource from BFSI, aviation, IT, retail, manufacturing and telecom industries. 

InSync co-founders have a wealth of experience handling complex networking projects both in local market as well as in overseas markets. “’We bring our expertise and thought leadership to produce something unique that can cater businesses around the world,” added Hannadige.

InSync believes in network automation and how future networks will be reshaped. Networking industry is already moving in that direction and leading vendors in the field are already incorporating functionalities to support business driven networks which will be a reality in a matter of time.