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 huge 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 offers community engineers with end-to-end visibility throughout their hybrid environments whereas automating their duties throughout IT workflows. At present, 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 situated throughout the USA 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 niche 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 means out of the constructing in the future and spending all night time serving to troubleshoot an issue. It seems {that a} Cisco change had been upgraded and, it modified an essential configuration. I bear in mind questioning why it took so lengthy, regardless that we had an entire workforce of good engineers engaged on it. Absolutely, there have to be a greater means.
I spotted that the explanation troubleshooting was so tough was a scarcity of knowledge. Throughout these lengthy nights, engineers at all times ask the identical few questions. What gadgets is my community fabricated from? What does the baseline appear like? Who made this, and why is it configured this fashion? I began NetBrain to make it simpler to reply these questions.
I knew that if community information was extra simply accessible, issues might be solved far more rapidly. At that first job, you’d must take a pager and a stack of community diagrams with you everytime you went on trip! My imaginative and prescient for NetBrain was to present engineers quick and quick access to the community information they should clear up issues and a option to simply automate their duties to allow them to be scaled up and finished proactively as a substitute of reactively. If we are able to catch and repair a problem 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 resolution as a substitute of conventional scripting or programming-based automation?
We wished to resolve the crucial 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 equivalent to Python and has a excessive stage of networking and CLI information. There are simply not sufficient folks with that exact ability set (they usually’re costly!). Tasks that pair coders with community engineers find yourself producing comparatively few automations that may solely deal with a restricted set of issues as a substitute 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 job. This results in a change in mindset the place NetOps and different IT groups will look to automation as their first resolution for many issues, slightly than a “final resort” reserved for just a few high-priority points.
AI is more and more shaping enterprise IT operations. How does AI improve NetBrain’s community automation capabilities, notably 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). One in every of these capabilities features a GenAI LLM Co-Pilot, which might assess, orchestrate, and summarize community automation outcomes utilizing pure language. This AI Co-Pilot serves as a expertise translator, enabling customers to interact with no-code automation with out the necessity for in depth coaching. We plan to proceed increasing our AI capabilities in upcoming releases.
Our chatbot additionally capabilities as a digital self-service instrument, permitting operations and safety groups to collect important community data, thereby conserving priceless NetOps assets 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 folks 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 how one can clear up each networking problem. However what do you do when that particular person is on trip, in a unique nation, or unavailable? Automation and AI assist share that particular person’s information with the remainder of the IT workforce with out requiring deep engineering and coding expertise.
Are you able to stroll us by means 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 dwell mannequin of a shopper’s multi-vendor networks that comes with Intent, site visitors forwarding, topology, and machine information 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 function of our digital twin is that it offers real-time information throughout all layers, making a extra seamless, built-in system. Our prospects are assured dwell 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 parts 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 related multi-vendor community. The advantage of real-time information is the power to work extra effectively internally with out the concern of human error whereas working in a single machine that helps the invention of conventional, digital, and cloud-based gadgets.
Many corporations wrestle with community downtime and troubleshooting. How does NetBrain’s AI-driven automation assist cut 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:
- Robotically create shareable incident abstract dashboards.
- Conduct automated monitoring to detect troubleshooting points earlier than they have an effect on a consumer
- Robotically conduct primary diagnostic exams at any time when a ticket is opened
- Robotically shut tickets
- Counsel remediations or attainable causes for points
- Give different IT groups simpler entry to community information
Even small time financial savings compound rapidly at scale – one in every of our prospects 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 cut back MTTR instantly. In addition they allow stage 1 engineers to resolve extra issues on their very own and cut back escalations. That is usually referred to 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 various infrastructures?
NetBrain ensures complete community observability and compliance throughout hybrid cloud and SDN environments. We seamlessly assist multi-cloud infrastructures like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, in addition to conventional networks, SD-WAN, and SDN deployments.
Our platform allows shoppers to watch cloud configuration modifications in actual time, automate steady compliance assessments, and observe evolving community configurations by means of an intuitive dashboard. Moreover, NetBrain offers multi-layered safety observability, constantly evaluating cloud safety throughout community, server, information, 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 information middle points earlier within the community assist 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 towards 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 cut back human error, enhance response instances, and forestall safety gaps, guaranteeing networks stay safe with out including operational overhead.
Given NetBrain’s skill to get rid of outages and enhance safety enforcement, do you see a future the place AI-driven networks turn into totally autonomous?
As AI-driven networks proceed to advance, they’re regularly changing conventional networking strategies. Nevertheless, full autonomy stays a future risk slightly than a direct actuality.
AI performs an important position in streamlining NetOps by automating labor-intensive duties. For instance, figuring out and cataloging IT infrastructure parts—historically a time-consuming course of—can now be considerably accelerated. With AI-powered Digital Twin expertise, duties like diagnosing a BGP tunnel problem could be lowered 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 problem arises, AI cannot solely help with prognosis but additionally suggest corrective actions, subsequent steps, and follow-up procedures—dramatically decreasing response instances and enabling groups to resolve issues quicker.
That mentioned, AI nonetheless has limitations. Whereas it could analyze information, recommend optimizations, and automate sure processes, it can’t make choices, take accountability, or approve community modifications with out human oversight. Given the complexity and excessive stakes of enterprise networking, AI’s suggestions have to be validated by engineers to stop expensive errors and downtime. Till AI can show better reliability and contextual decision-making, totally autonomous networks will stay an aspiration slightly than a actuality.
NetBrain now serves over 2,500 enterprise prospects, together with one-third of Fortune 500 corporations. 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 offers real-time visibility into all the hybrid community, permitting groups to automate diagnostics, implement golden engineering requirements, and forestall outages earlier than they occur. Mixed with our ITSM-integrated troubleshooting and Triple Protection Change Administration, enterprises can scale automation throughout even probably the most advanced environments—with out requiring a military of builders.
Finally, NetBrain makes automation accessible, enabling groups to resolve points quicker, implement design intent, and maintain business-critical functions operating easily. Automation mixed with correct community mapping and deeper community perception lets us clear up many NetOps challenges with out further overhead.
Trying forward 5 years, how do you see the panorama of community automation evolving, and what position do you envision NetBrain taking part in 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 guide 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 is going to make it simpler to acquire and tailor community information into digestible and significant data so groups can cut back threat and acquire efficiencies quicker.
NetBrain is on the forefront of this evolution. Our Digital Twin offers a dwell 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 guide intervention to completely autonomous operations. Our imaginative and prescient is straightforward: 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, it is going to 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 good interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to NetBrain.
