Automated Assurance with Cisco Crosswork and Accedian

Rana El Desouky Kazamel and Tom Footit discuss the collaboration between Cisco Crosswork and Accedian, which is now part of Cisco, focusing on automated assurance for mass scale networks. Their goal is to help network operators monitor services, monetize SLAs, and deliver enhanced digital experiences. They explain how their solution provides a single pane of glass across multi-vendor and multi-domain networks, mapping services to network operations and enabling enhanced services.

They cover the end-to-end automation framework necessary for simplifying mass scale networks, including workflow definition, service provisioning, visibility, assurance, planning, and optimization. They emphasize the importance of intent-based assurance, which starts with the service intent and SLA metrics.

Tom details Accedian’s capabilities, including the use of sensors (probes) to generate test traffic and collect data for analyzing network behavior, predicting issues, and identifying SLA compliance. They also discuss how issues like fiber cuts can be managed and correlated with affected services, and how policies can be adjusted in real-time based on various constraints, including energy consumption.

Rana and Tom touch on integrations with other Cisco tools like Thousand Eyes for end-to-end assurance, and they demonstrate how their platform allows operators to drill down from a high-level view of network health to specific issues and devices causing problems.

Overall, the collaboration aims to provide network operators with the tools to proactively manage their networks, ensure service quality, and respond to issues efficiently.