Apstra has a really interesting pitch. What if instead of building your network around how each vendor’s node and appliance talked to one another and what capabilities it had, you could design the network the way you wanted it to work first, and use an abstraction layer to make sure all the individual pieces played nice with one another? That’s what Apstra is proposing with their Apstra Operating System (AOS). David Varnum gave it a look at Tech Field Day, and shares his enthusiasm for their intent-driven approach.