Anyone who has followed the tech circuit for a while has probably grown weary of hearing the term “network automation.” This is something that has been talked about for years, with real-world progress lagging well behind the hype. But now, it seems we’ve reached the event horizon for network automation to materialize; will it be worth the wait?

Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, remarked on all the buzz about automation at this year’s Juniper NXTWORK event in Santa Clara, California. He joked, “I know we’ve been hearing about automation my whole career in networking. So it’s about time, right? Can we do it now?”

Playing three-reel interface slots

Ethan Banks, cofounder of Packet Pushers Interactive, LLC, said what is different this time are the advances in interface configuration, such as “the OpenConfig group of customers that are putting together models — and the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] is involved in this too — modeling what the network and different aspects of network operations should look like.”

These groups are working together, Banks explained, “so that we have a standardized, predictable way that we can now apply automation techniques to so it’s not all a little different when I’m working on my Juniper infrastructure versus my Cisco versus my Arrista.”

Banks went on to say that this will help make “digital cohesion” possible, which is crucial to virtualization and multi-cloud infrastructure.

Network net worth

John Furrier (@furrier), theCUBE co-host, said one of his main takeaways from the show is that Juniper may have a winning sharing strategy going for them. “I think there’s going to be an ecosystem that’s going to develop around security practitioners who want the network data who will see value at the network layer,” he said.

Furrier also sees Juniper Networks investing a lot in NFV (Network Functions Virtualization). “They’re betting the ranch on NFV as that North Star,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Juniper NXTWORK 2016 event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE