Oct 24, 2019
With a recently launched official ITSM integration into ServiceNow, NetBrain’s network visualisation and automation platform generates much greater levels of value through faster and more accurate process execution.
How can NetBrain achieve this? Here are six best practices for optimizing ITSM:
1. Incident Management/ Security Incident Management
NetBrain allows you to speed up your incident management processes by enabling a faster time to resolution. How? By providing instantaneous discovery of the relevant parts of the network in context of the data in the incident. NetBrain’s platform goes one step further by enabling runbook automation that provides controlled and faster front-line operator-initiated resolution. With our new supported integration into ITSM solutions such as ServiceNow, all the data is augmented to the incident, and any automated or operator-initiated troubleshooting or restorative actions can be pushed from within your service desk.
Over the last 15 years NetBrain has built a library of “drivers” which facilitate any action or command to be processed on any of the 120+ network vendors. This makes the process of integrating ServiceNow with your network way less complex and more task- and output-driven.
What about Security Incident Management process and in addition to the above?
NetBrain can be triggered by event management in ServiceNow or your external IDS or SIEM tools to perform instantaneous discovery and documentation of your network configuration. Often security incidents can be transient and only happen within a few seconds or minutes. NetBrain can collect and automate the documentation for events like this which are of course fully auditable and time stamped.
2. Change Management
NetBrain’s ability to discover your total network and its configuration enables change management to be more effective at planning, assessing risk, and executing changes to your network. The combination of comprehensive bottom-up configuration discovery and NetBrain’s ability to do this across over 120+ different manufacturers of networking equipment means that the impact of a change can be thoroughly planned.
In addition, NetBrain can perform change execution at scale, at machine-to-machine level speed, and provide a before-and-after comparison to a very granular level of any config changes that have taken place. In the NetBrain platform, you can roll back any changes at the press of a button and use the discovery capability in combination with your ITSM tool to detect and manage unauthorized changes to the network.
3. Configuration Management / CMDB
NetBrain discovery can be used to feed your CMDB with vital network data, including relationships under either a centralised or federated strategy. The performance information about your devices can also be captured and appended as attributes to your configuration items for historical reporting and based on the frequency of collection.
4. Knowledge Management
Using NetBrain it is possible to very quickly build runbooks which can be used in certain situations to diagnose, troubleshoot, or restore service. These runbooks can be developed and approved by experienced network engineers and then linked to pre-approved knowledge articles in ServiceNow, which in turn can be suggested or surfaced to your operators to initiate should certain conditions arise. Over time the machine-learning capabilities coming in the next release of NetBrain will make suggestions on the appropriate runbooks for certain scenarios.
5. IT Governance and Risk – Compliance Automation
NetBrain’s real-time mapping and granular configuration-level discovery capability enables you to very quickly and easily report on your network’s alignment to any compliance standards or levels that are required. These reports can be fully automated and integrated with ServiceNow or other ITSM to ensure that a constant level of compliance is achieved. As rules and requirements change from the various regulatory bodies, NetBrain can be quickly modified to capture and report on the additional configuration data.
6. Hardware and Software Asset Management
NetBrain’s comprehensive discovery of your total network (both software defined [SDN] and traditional) enables quick and easily accessible reporting of your hardware and software estate in minutes and hours, rather than days and months. This can be used for financial processes like asset management to enable reconciliation with support and maintenance invoices through to validation of outsourced environments.
To find out more about NetBrain’s visualisation and network automation platform visit www.netbraintech.com