Networksmanaged

Networksmanaged is a term used to describe a holistic approach to governing, monitoring, and automating networks within and across organizational boundaries. It encompasses tools, processes, and architectures that provide centralized visibility and control over diverse network infrastructures, including local area networks, branch networks, data centers, and cloud networks. The aim is to achieve consistent policy enforcement, rapid service delivery, and measurable performance across heterogeneous environments.

Core components typically include a central management plane or controller, telemetry and analytics, a policy engine, automation workflows, platform adapters for devices and cloud services, security and compliance modules, and role-based access control with audit trails.

Standards and interoperability rely on established network management protocols and data models, such as SNMP, NetConf, RESTCONF, and gNMI, with YANG models commonly used to describe device capabilities. Interfaces are provided via vendor-neutral APIs or adapters to allow integration with diverse equipment and cloud services. The architecture often supports multi-cloud and hybrid deployments through connectors and abstraction layers.

Operations commonly supported are network discovery and inventory, topology mapping, configuration management, change control, performance monitoring, fault detection, and security policy enforcement. Automation is used to provision, configure, and restore networks in response to events and intents, while observability data informs capacity planning and service assurance.

Benefits include faster provisioning, fewer manual errors, consistent policy enforcement, and improved security posture, alongside reduced operational costs. Challenges include integration complexity, vendor fragmentation, scalability, data privacy concerns, and ensuring secure, auditable automation.

Originates from developments in software-defined networking and network automation in the 2010s and 2020s, and is used to describe both organizational practices and managed-services offerings. See also: network management; SDN; network automation; intent-based networking.