Cisco : New Crosswork APIs Help Service Providers Automate Network Operations

Due to changes in customer preferences, and technological evolutions such as 5G, Service Providers (SPs) are expected to face massive traffic growth and increased operational complexities. To make the most out of those opportunities, Service Providers are looking for ways to control costs and simplify network operations. Thus, many Service Providers are choosing to embark on a journey to automate their network operations.

Cisco Crosswork Network Automation is a platform and product suite that - in addition to providing state-of-the-art automation orchestration and analytics products - is built to be flexible, customizable, programmable, and open. Openness and flexibility were created to enable SP's, with the help of ISV's, to address the many different automation use cases, and make the most out of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and advanced analytics.

Crosswork is designed to include many tools that make it easy for external developers to integrate and customize with the Crosswork apps and platform at minimal development time and cost.

Cisco Crosswork Network Automation key architecture tenets

A new set of Crosswork APIs on DevNet

We have recently launched the Crosswork Health Insight 3.0 and Crosswork Change Automation 3.0. As part of this release, we have added a wide range of APIs for both applications to our DevNet page. Those APIs are covering most of the functions that currently exist in the applications.

For example, Using Crosswork Health Insights and Change Automation a user we can now instruct the software via APIs to detect if an interface is flapping, by activating interface flapping KPIs, and if the interface is indeed flapping to automatically act (by executing a playbook) to solve the issue. Such API driven 'Closed Loop Automation' can drastically reduce the time it takes to detect and solve an issue in the network.

To start learning how to use the Crosswork APIs, please view the following use cases and code repositories.

Create your own customized KPIs and Playbooks

We have added detailed documentation with regards to how users and developers can customize and create their own Health Insight KPIs and Change Automation Playbooks.

To start creating your own KPIs and Playbooks, please review our stock and custom KPIs and Playbooks on Cisco Code Exchange.

Our Service Provider customers tend to have unique requirements when it comes to which KPIs to track and which actions/Plays are needed to be taken in different scenarios. Therefore, the ability to easily customize Playbooks and KPIs provides great value to SPs.

We have delivered a couple of workshop at Cisco Live USA and are planning to have more API based workshops for Crosswork soon. Stay tuned.

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