Hoping to automate corporate network management, Juniper Networks Inc. today announced three new “Juniper Bots,” software applications designed to automate configuration changes across networks.

The new bots are said to be an essential component of Juniper’s “Self-Driving Network” initiative, which envisions the creation of fully autonomous networks that can self-configure, monitor, manage, correct, defend and analyze networks, all with very little human intervention.

Although it is possible to build autonomous networks already, Juniper said doing so is extremely challenging as it requires expertise in complex programming languages that few developers possess. As a result, very few enterprises have managed to create fully autonomous networks that can quickly and easily scale to meet their business demands.

That’s what Juniper is aiming to do with its new bots. The two Contrail Intent bots and one AppFormix Analytics bot are focused on translating user intent into automatic configuration changes across the network and monitoring them to identify any performance issues. The new bots include the Contrail PeerBot, which is designed to automate network peering, which relates to Border Gateway Protocol routing and complex policy enforcement. The Contrail TestBot is designed to enable the continuous deployment of software applications. It does so by automating the auditing processes necessary to design, provision and deploy changes in the network whenever applications are updated.

Finally there’s the AppFormix HealthBot, which is a kind of network health tracker that uses machine learning to glean insights about the state of the network. With HealthBot, network operators can easily troubleshoot any performance issues and carry out network maintenance as required to ensure everything runs smoothly.

“Operating a network is one of the most resource-intensive IT functions within any enterprise, cloud or service provider organization,” said Sally Bament, vice president of service provider marketing at Juniper. “Juniper Bots bring us closer to our vision for The Self-Driving Network, one that requires less human intervention and the ability to focus on more strategic business initiatives.”

Juniper also said it’s updating its Juniper Extension Toolkit, which is an interface for developers that allows them to build applications for devices running the company’s Junos operating system, and use Service APIs to interact with those devices.

With the update, Juniper said it’s extending its management and control application programming interface to the data plane. The idea is that developers will be able to create applications with direct data plane access on Juniper’s vMX and MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers. By doing so, the company says developers can access advanced network programmability with Junos OS to obtain “near-infinite control” of the silicon chips that power these routers.

Image: ItNeverEnds/Pixabay