How IT Automation Will Transform Networks, Infrastructure, and Security in 2018

Ubiquitous Automation

Automation is becoming a foundational practice for IT operations. By expressing configuration, provisioning, and validation as code, organizations can reduce manual effort, improve consistency, and accelerate change delivery.

Network Automation

Network infrastructure has historically relied on manual CLI edits. The article identifies four concrete approaches that bring network management into a DevOps workflow:

Centralised TFTP‑based configuration management – Legacy devices can be updated by storing a master configuration file on a TFTP server and pushing it to each device. Tools such as BMC’s BCAN automate checksum verification, offset correction, and rollback handling.

Infrastructure‑as‑Code with Terraform – Terraform providers expose the APIs of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, OpenStack, VMware, etc.) and on‑prem virtualisation stacks. By declaring aws_vpc, azurerm_virtual_network, or custom provider resources in .tf files, network topologies can be created, modified, or destroyed with a single terraform apply command.

Network modules for Ansible – Ansible’s network_cli and netconf connection plugins allow playbooks to configure routers, switches, and firewalls. Vendor‑specific collections (e.g., cisco.ios, arista.eos) are expanding, enabling idempotent configuration pushes and state verification.

Software‑Defined Networking (SDN) white‑box platforms – Solutions such as Big Switch’s white‑box switches expose a programmable API (often OpenFlow or REST) that can be orchestrated alongside virtual machine or container orchestration layers. The SDN controller automatically provisions VLANs, routing policies, and QoS settings as workloads are instantiated.

Infrastructure Automation

Manual provisioning of servers, containers, or bare‑metal nodes creates bottlenecks measured in days or weeks. Modern automation platforms address this by:

Using image‑based provisioning tools (e.g., Packer, Golden Images) to create repeatable base images.

Applying configuration management (Ansible, Chef, Puppet) immediately after instance launch to install software, apply security baselines, and register the node in monitoring systems.

Leveraging orchestration frameworks (e.g., HashiCorp Nomad, Kubernetes) to scale thousands of instances from a single declarative manifest.

When provisioning is fully automated, operational focus shifts to continuous management tasks such as drift detection, automated patching, and self‑healing remediation.

Microsoft Ecosystem Automation

Historically, Windows environments were managed with GUI‑centric tools, but recent trends integrate them into the same automation pipelines used for Linux workloads:

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates and the newer az CLI enable IaC for virtual networks, storage accounts, and Azure‑hosted services.

Open‑source Ansible collections for SQL Server ( community.sql) allow playbooks to install, configure, and patch SQL instances on both Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Microsoft’s contribution to community projects (e.g., PowerShell DSC modules, Azure DevOps extensions) bridges the gap between proprietary services and open‑source automation frameworks.

Adopting these tools reduces the reliance on manual, point‑and‑click administration and makes Windows workloads first‑class citizens in CI/CD pipelines.

Security Automation (DevSecOps)

Embedding security controls directly into configuration management yields several benefits:

Security baselines become version‑controlled code, enabling git diff to reveal policy changes.

Automated compliance scans (e.g., OpenSCAP, CIS‑Benchmarks) can be triggered after each deployment.

Incident response playbooks can be executed automatically to isolate compromised hosts, rotate credentials, and generate audit logs.

The DevSecOps movement encourages teams to treat security as a continuous, testable component of the delivery pipeline rather than a post‑deployment checklist.

Application Orchestration

Modern applications span multiple clouds, databases, and legacy systems, making manual troubleshooting impractical. Orchestration platforms provide:

Declarative runtime specifications (e.g., Kubernetes Deployment and Service objects) that define desired state and let the control plane reconcile drift.

Integrated observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK) that automatically collect metrics and logs for every service instance.

Self‑service service‑desk automation via chat‑ops or ticket‑bridge bots that trigger predefined remediation workflows.

While Kubernetes accelerates these capabilities, the article cautions that legacy, stable workloads need not be migrated solely for automation’s sake; the cost‑benefit analysis should drive migration decisions.

Conclusion

To remain competitive in 2018 and beyond, organizations should adopt automation across five key domains—network, infrastructure, Microsoft platforms, security, and application orchestration—using mature tools such as Terraform, Ansible, SDN controllers, and DevSecOps pipelines. By codifying operations, teams gain speed, consistency, and the ability to scale without proportionally increasing headcount.