Gartner Group predicts that the use of Ethernet fabrics, SDN, SD-WAN and cloud-managed networks, will replace more than 50% of the installed Internet access base by 2020. Due to higher access speeds and to the growing use of network management systems (Juniper’s Network Director and Security Director come to mind), the good old Command Line Interface will soon fade away. Gartner says by 2020, only 30% of network operations teams will use the command line interface (CLI) as their primary interface. It was 85% at the end of last year.
Instead, network management will move to ‘Intent-based’ networking, where “intent” describes which services are required of the network, rather than how to configure each piece. The underlying network management system figures out the actual commands that get sent to the equipment. Intent-based networking reduces network outages due to CLI errors and validates the network design and changes before actual deployment. By the end of 2020, more than 60% of enterprises will have switched over, sayeth Gartner.
Others are predicting that a single ‘intent’ glossary will emerge and different vendors will implement intentions using their own proprietary equipment-language libraries. Dave Lenrow of HP wrote up a nice post explaining it further.