Working smarter not harder is the goal of every organizational team. In the case of IT professionals, it’s a goal best and most easily achieved through the use of AI-powered network automation and WiFi automation solutions.
Understanding why automation solutions work
Wired and WiFi network ecosystems are complex, dynamic affairs. A single network often consists of thousands of users, connected devices, software, and applications. IT teams are sometimes onsite, but not always, and it can’t be assumed that a site has a WiFi expert available; however, both wired, and WiFi networks must be reliable and optimized or organization-wide operations are at stake.
So, what organizations across all industries are looking at is a massive, complicated resource that requires constant, real-time attention, and is responsible for supporting most processes. How do they ensure it remains operational? By using resources that deliver:
- 24/7 real time analytics
- Automatic problem identification
- Automatic suggested resolutions
- Proactive testing
- Remote troubleshooting
These capabilities are the only way to give IT professionals complete, uninterrupted visibility into all network performance, behavior, and user experience. Without this visibility, issues can’t be avoided, or identified and resolved before causing operational downtime. With this visibility, everything changes.
As an example, here are two common problems organizations are currently facing with their WiFi networks.
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Video Collaboration
Video collaboration applications are seeing more and more use. These apps depend on reliable real time data. They have little tolerance for issues such as interference or dropped data packets.
Instead, these apps require predictable, reliable WiFi. If there’s a problem with data transmission, everyone knows right away. Without network or WiFi automation, IT teams are reliant on users to report issues, which means that user experience is affected before IT is involved. Teams are stuck in a reactive process.
With automation, everything is different. IT professionals can depend on the solution to automatically identify any potential issues because these solutions monitor the entire network ecosystem. This means that any problem and its root cause is identified immediately. IT can resolve issues quickly, often before users know there’s a problem.
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Explosion of IoT Devices Combined with Ever-Evolving WiFi Standards
New devices entering the market is not a bad thing. Utilizing these devices is another example of working smarter not harder. However, IoT devices must adapt along with networks. As WiFi standards evolve (WiFi 6 to WiFi 6E to WiFi 7, etc.), companies start experiencing interoperability and performance issues. Who knows the compatibility requirements of each device? When a network is upgraded, how many devices also must be upgraded? How is device software updated?
It isn’t feasible to ask IT to manually track this information when there are hundreds or thousands of IoT devices on the network. An automated solution has all the answers on hand, whenever they are needed. This makes deciding exactly when and how to upgrade easier, and eases implementation transitions.
IT tasks suitable for transitioning to automated support
Let’s look in more detail at some of the tasks most easily and wisely transitioned to an AI-powered network or WiFi automation solution.
Network testing
Without automation, network tests are run manually. This requires IT to be onsite, which limits the data that can be gathered to provide user experience metrics. It also can cause problems depending on the site in question. Certain hospital rooms, dorm rooms, or manufacturing sites, for example, are very difficult for IT professionals to access.
With automation, network tests can be run at any time from any location. Organizations can proactively measure the health of the WiFi network with a WiFi automation solution, and both the wired and WiFi networks with a network automation solution.
These proactive insights keep IT ahead of any potential issues, allowing problems to be resolved before they are problems. This process is made even smoother if the solution automatically alerts IT to failed tests rather than merely passively recording the test failure.
Intermittent problem identification and solution
Most network issues are intermittent, and this makes resolving them incredibly challenging. Issues can strike at any time, and then will often seemingly resolve themselves - only to strike again. To effectively identify the root cause of the problem and resolve it, IT must study data from the moment the issue occurred. If data wasn’t captured at that moment, IT must wait for the problem to recur. This leads to problems taking anywhere from days to even months to resolve.
Network and WiFi automation solutions work 24/7 to automatically analyze the network environment and detect performance problems. When powered by artificial intelligence, these solutions learn to recognize normal behavior and will therefore alert IT as soon as anything abnormal occurs. They don’t work in shifts or require breaks. They are always on, and automatically capture and store data so that IT teams always have the analytics they need to understand network behavior.
Network optimization made easy
Networks are complex but optimizing them can be easy.
With automation solutions, IT professionals trust that the network is optimized unless they are otherwise notified. This frees up their energy to focus on other critical tasks, which is why businesses that pursue reliable optimization see significantly increased IT performance levels.
Data shows that, depending on the solution, companies can expect to see up to a 90% reduction in the Meantime to Resolution of network issues. Not only does this get networks back to optimal performance faster, but it also returns a significant amount of time to IT. The question becomes, why not choose WiFi automation?
