Lingping Gao, Founder, Chief Government Officer, and Chairman of NetBrain Applied sciences, established the corporate in 2004 with a mission to simplify community administration. Previous to founding NetBrain, Mr. Gao was the Chief Community Architect at Thomson Monetary, the place he managed the complexities of enormous enterprise networks and skilled the challenges of sustaining community efficiency.
Mr. Gao has expertise inside a number of areas of enterprise, together with administration, engineering, and worldwide enterprise inside the networking, software program, and automotive industries. He holds a BS and a BA in Automotive Engineering from Tsinghua College and an MS in Engineering from Yale College.
Based in 2004, NetBrain is the market chief for community automation. Its expertise platform supplies community engineers with end-to-end visibility throughout their hybrid environments whereas automating their duties throughout IT workflows. At the moment, greater than 2,400 of the world’s largest enterprises and managed companies suppliers use NetBrain to automate community documentation, speed up troubleshooting, and strengthen community safety—whereas integrating with a wealthy ecosystem of companions. NetBrain is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, with workers positioned throughout the US and Canada, Germany, the UK, India, and China.
What impressed you to start out NetBrain in 2004? Have been there any particular challenges you confronted at Thomson Monetary that led you to see a spot in community administration?
Early in my profession, I spent 5 years as a community engineer at Thomson Monetary. I bear in mind getting pulled into the NOC on my manner out of the constructing sooner or later and spending all night time serving to troubleshoot an issue. It seems {that a} Cisco change had been upgraded and, it modified an vital configuration. I bear in mind questioning why it took so lengthy, although we had a complete workforce of sensible engineers engaged on it. Absolutely, there should be a greater manner.
I noticed that the rationale troubleshooting was so tough was an absence of information. Throughout these lengthy nights, engineers at all times ask the identical few questions. What units is my community made from? What does the baseline seem like? Who made this, and why is it configured this manner? I began NetBrain to make it simpler to reply these questions.
I knew that if community knowledge was extra simply accessible, issues may very well be solved rather more shortly. At that first job, you’d should take a pager and a stack of community diagrams with you everytime you went on trip! My imaginative and prescient for NetBrain was to provide engineers quick and easy accessibility to the community knowledge they should resolve issues and a option to simply automate their duties to allow them to be scaled up and carried out proactively as an alternative of reactively. If we are able to catch and repair a difficulty earlier than it impacts an end-user then nobody has to spend all night time troubleshooting! Now, 20 years later, my imaginative and prescient is coming to fruition with NetBrain.
NetBrain pioneered no-code automation for community administration. What was the thought course of behind growing a no-code answer as an alternative of conventional scripting or programming-based automation?
We wished to resolve the important challenges dealing with community operations groups by reducing the barrier to adopting and utilizing community automation whereas making it accessible to all ranges of IT skillsets. We see automation as harnessing the experience of community engineers to create automation, making the platform extra helpful and ingrained within the tradition of community operations.
Script-based DIY community automation requires an engineer who is aware of coding corresponding to Python and has a excessive stage of networking and CLI information. There are simply not sufficient individuals with that exact ability set (and so they’re costly!). Initiatives that pair coders with community engineers find yourself producing comparatively few automations that may solely handle a restricted set of issues as an alternative of stopping recurrences.
No-code automation makes it straightforward sufficient to deploy and scale automation throughout hybrid networks that it may be used for a lot of issues – actually any repetitive activity. This results in a change in mindset the place NetOps and different IT groups will look to automation as their first answer for many issues, moderately than a “final resort” reserved for only some high-priority points.
AI is more and more shaping enterprise IT operations. How does AI improve NetBrain’s community automation capabilities, significantly in troubleshooting and safety enforcement?
AI-powered options had been a significant replace in NetBrain’s most up-to-date model, Subsequent-Gen Launch 12 (R12). Certainly one of these capabilities features a GenAI LLM Co-Pilot, which may assess, orchestrate, and summarize community automation outcomes utilizing pure language. This AI Co-Pilot serves as a expertise translator, enabling customers to have interaction with no-code automation with out the necessity for intensive coaching. We plan to proceed increasing our AI capabilities in upcoming releases.
Our chatbot additionally capabilities as a digital self-service device, permitting operations and safety groups to assemble important community data, thereby conserving invaluable NetOps sources for extra strategic actions. Customers can pose questions in pure language, facilitating intuitive downside decision and automating troubleshooting, change administration, and evaluation workflows.
Broadly, we see automation as the way in which to scale NetOps processes as much as machine scale and AI as the way in which individuals can work together with these automations and the community total. Collectively, they assist bridge the information hole inside IT groups by capturing years of skilled expertise and making it out there to engineers of all ranges. Almost each enterprise has an engineer who is aware of the right way to resolve each networking situation. However what do you do when that individual is on trip, in a distinct nation, or unavailable? Automation and AI assist share that individual’s information with the remainder of the IT workforce with out requiring deep engineering and coding abilities.
Are you able to stroll us by way of how NetBrain’s Digital Twin expertise works and the way it advantages organizations managing hybrid and multi-cloud networks?
NetBrain’s Digital Twin is a stay mannequin of a consumer’s multi-vendor networks that includes Intent, visitors forwarding, topology, and system knowledge and helps no-code automation and dynamic maps. Not like different digital twins, our intent layer homes a big assortment of community configurations and service-level designs important for successfully delivering any and all utility necessities.
One other distinctive characteristic of our digital twin is that it supplies real-time knowledge throughout all layers, making a extra seamless, built-in system. Our clients are assured stay calculations of baseline and historic forwarding paths throughout multi-cloud and hybrid environments, in addition to real-time topology and configurations of conventional, digital, and cloud-based elements with our hybrid community. This, mixed with Community Auto-Discovery, removes the need of manually creating static community maps and constantly updates each part of the linked multi-vendor community. The good thing about real-time knowledge is the flexibility to work extra effectively internally with out the concern of human error whereas working in a single system that helps the invention of conventional, digital, and cloud-based units.
Many firms wrestle with community downtime and troubleshooting. How does NetBrain’s AI-driven automation assist scale back Imply Time to Restore (MTTR)?
NetBrain reduces MTTR by making troubleshooting extra environment friendly and streamlined. Our AI-powered automation does this in a number of methods:
- Mechanically create shareable incident abstract dashboards.
- Conduct automated monitoring to detect troubleshooting points earlier than they have an effect on a person
- Mechanically conduct fundamental diagnostic exams every time a ticket is opened
- Mechanically shut tickets
- Recommend remediations or potential causes for points
- Give different IT groups simpler entry to community knowledge
Even small time financial savings compound shortly at scale – one in all our clients estimated that NetBrain saved them 16,000 troubleshooting hours in 2022 on about 63,000 tickets by automating a collection of routine diagnostic exams. All in all, these capabilities make troubleshooting extra environment friendly and scale back MTTR straight. Additionally they allow stage 1 engineers to resolve extra issues on their very own and scale back escalations. That is typically known as “shifting left.” It frees up extra time for senior engineers to spend on tougher troubleshooting.
With the rise of hybrid cloud and SDN environments, how does NetBrain guarantee end-to-end community observability and compliance throughout numerous infrastructures?
NetBrain ensures complete community observability and compliance throughout hybrid cloud and SDN environments. We seamlessly help multi-cloud infrastructures like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, in addition to conventional networks, SD-WAN, and SDN deployments.
Our platform allows purchasers to watch cloud configuration modifications in actual time, automate steady compliance assessments, and observe evolving community configurations by way of an intuitive dashboard. Moreover, NetBrain supplies multi-layered safety observability, constantly evaluating cloud safety throughout community, server, knowledge, and utility layers.
For SDN materials, NetBrain enhances visibility and makes SDN information simply shareable throughout groups. By leveraging automation, organizations can scale SDN experience whereas accelerating incident response. Our “Shift Left” strategy proactively identifies root causes and resolves knowledge middle points earlier within the community help lifecycle, considerably decreasing MTTR.
How has NetBrain tailored to new cybersecurity challenges, particularly with rising considerations about community safety vulnerabilities?
Cyber threats are evolving quickly, and conventional, reactive safety approaches can now not sustain. NetBrain has tailored by making community safety proactive and automatic, serving to IT discover misconfigurations and vulnerabilities earlier than they are often exploited by attackers.
We provide Triple Protection Change Administration, which validates each community change in opposition to safety insurance policies earlier than, throughout, and after implementation. This ensures compliance and prevents unintended publicity. Our automation additionally constantly audits configurations, detects drift, and integrates with ITSM and safety platforms to implement greatest practices in real-time.
By leveraging AI and automation, NetBrain helps enterprises scale back human error, enhance response instances, and stop safety gaps, guaranteeing networks stay safe with out including operational overhead.
Given NetBrain’s potential to eradicate outages and enhance safety enforcement, do you see a future the place AI-driven networks turn into absolutely autonomous?
As AI-driven networks proceed to advance, they’re step by step changing conventional networking strategies. Nonetheless, full autonomy stays a future risk moderately than a right away actuality.
AI performs a vital function in streamlining NetOps by automating labor-intensive duties. For instance, figuring out and cataloging IT infrastructure elements—historically a time-consuming course of—can now be considerably accelerated. With AI-powered Digital Twin expertise, duties like diagnosing a BGP tunnel situation might be decreased from two hours to only ten minutes. AI additionally helps bridge the information hole inside IT groups by capturing and distributing years of skilled expertise to engineers of all ranges. When a difficulty arises, AI can’t solely help with prognosis but in addition advocate corrective actions, subsequent steps, and follow-up procedures—dramatically decreasing response instances and enabling groups to resolve issues sooner.
That stated, AI nonetheless has limitations. Whereas it could analyze knowledge, counsel optimizations, and automate sure processes, it can’t make selections, take accountability, or approve community modifications with out human oversight. Given the complexity and excessive stakes of enterprise networking, AI’s suggestions should be validated by engineers to forestall pricey errors and downtime. Till AI can exhibit larger reliability and contextual decision-making, absolutely autonomous networks will stay an aspiration moderately than a actuality.
NetBrain now serves over 2,500 enterprise clients, together with one-third of Fortune 500 firms. What do you assume has been the important thing to your success in scaling and gaining enterprise adoption?
Our success comes from essentially reworking how enterprises handle their networks. Conventional, reactive troubleshooting now not scales, so we pioneered no-code community automation to make community operations proactive, not simply reactive.
A key differentiator is our Digital Twin, which supplies real-time visibility into the complete hybrid community, permitting groups to automate diagnostics, implement golden engineering requirements, and stop outages earlier than they occur. Mixed with our ITSM-integrated troubleshooting and Triple Protection Change Administration, enterprises can scale automation throughout even essentially the most advanced environments—with out requiring a military of builders.
In the end, NetBrain makes automation accessible, enabling groups to resolve points sooner, implement design intent, and maintain business-critical functions working easily. Automation mixed with correct community mapping and deeper community perception lets us resolve many NetOps challenges with out further overhead.
Trying forward 5 years, how do you see the panorama of community automation evolving, and what function do you envision NetBrain enjoying in shaping the way forward for AI-driven community operations?
Over the subsequent 5 years, community automation will transfer past scripted duties and reactive troubleshooting to AI-driven, intent-based automation that dynamically adapts to altering community circumstances. The times of handbook diagnostics and fragmented instruments are numbered — automation would be the spine of community operations, guaranteeing resilience, safety, and agility at scale.
AI will make that automation accessible and decrease the barrier to usability in any respect ranges in operations. It can make it simpler to acquire and tailor community knowledge into digestible and significant data so groups can scale back threat and acquire efficiencies sooner.
NetBrain is on the forefront of this evolution. Our Digital Twin supplies a stay mannequin of the community, permitting AI to know its design intent and implement it proactively. We’re pioneering GenAI-driven troubleshooting, self-healing networks, and deeper ITSM integrations so enterprises can shift from handbook intervention to completely autonomous operations. Our imaginative and prescient is easy: make community automation intuitive, scalable, and indispensable — turning each engineer into an automation skilled with out requiring them to code.
Within the subsequent few years, AI-driven community operations gained’t be a luxurious, will probably be a necessity. NetBrain is main that cost, guaranteeing enterprises keep forward of complexity whereas holding networks safe, compliant, and at all times out there.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to NetBrain.
