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Innovative Automation Tools Accelerate Federal Agency’s Network Transformation

A federal agency undertook a sweeping redesigning of the extensive network footprint at its branch office sites. The project was hampered by numerous configuration and testing complexities that arose as it installed new network switches and related hardware at these sites. Due to these complexities, the agency engaged BlueAlly to augment its network engineering staff. The BlueAlly team developed a web application to automate network configuration generation and testing, resulting in time savings, enhanced scalability, and other benefits that streamline our client’s multi-site infrastructure transformation. Due to this initial engagement’s success, the agency maintains an ongoing relationship with our team, relying on BlueAlly to simplify its complex network upgrade.

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The Client

Our client is a federal agency with thousands of employees and hundreds of locations across the United States.

Data Segmentation

The Client

Our client is a federal agency with thousands of employees and hundreds of locations across the United States.

The Problem

Our client consolidated its network design, resulting in complex updates as it transitioned from older hardware and configuration formats to newer devices. The agency also lacked an automated process to validate network operations and devices upon completing a site upgrade. This caused inconsistent documentation when validating the site’s network operation, resulting in friction between the network engineers and onsite staff in the event of an outage following a network site refresh. Inconsistent documentation meant the team was not always able to show proof that the network was healthy after work had been completed. These configuration and validation tasks were immensely time-consuming when completed manually, necessitating agile automation to expedite the project’s completion.

The BlueAlly Solution 

First, we evaluated the agency’s infrastructure footprint to understand how to optimize its network transformation to meet its deadline requirements. We knew our client needed to leverage automation, so we developed a tool that could automate device configurations. This web application queried device information for individual sites stored in the agency’s central database and then generated a new device configuration, enabling our client’s network engineers to simply download the new configuration and load it onto devices before shipping them to branch office sites. However, we also extended our web application’s capabilities to verify the operational state of newly refreshed sites. This provided our client’s engineers with automated test output that included details ranging from the CPU utilization and power consumption of each network device at the site to performing network-wide reachability tests using ping and traceroute, along with other parameters.

Our tool included over 46 available tests and greatly reduced the manual intervention required for parsing output across diverse parameters when completing validation testing. This web application shortened the task time to less than 5 minutes per site validation compared to the agency’s previous time of 40-50 minutes per site validation. Our tool also documented the output into a downloadable file, thereby creating a frictionless, standardized process for logging, tracking, and storing validation test results.

The Results 

Our web application saved approximately 10-17 hours of network engineers’ time per month while significantly reducing the possibility of human error resulting from manual processes. Our expert engineers spent about 120 hours over the course of 3-4 months developing this tool, delivering a return on investment (ROI) in under a year. In building this web application, our engineers also provided a scalable framework to support future use cases and evolutions in the agency’s network, offering additional flexibility. As a result of this collaboration, our client enhanced its configuration and validation testing processes through automation, enabling streamlined network transformation across its multi-site infrastructure.

Time Saving

Time Savings

Expedited task completion times and lowered labor costs

Network Automation

Automation

Reduced manual intervention to minimize human error and ensure consistent results

Standardization

Standardization

Created uniform processes for network configurations and validation testing

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Scalability

Enhanced scalability and flexibility for future site refreshes