No amount of network downtime is acceptable today and with the global always-on nature of networks, change windows are getting shorter. Yet, network teams are still expected to roll out complex updates flawlessly, often across hybrid, multi-cloud, and containerized environments.

It sounds simple on paper: plan your changes, execute quickly, and minimize disruption. But in reality, intent often drifts between planning and execution. Priorities shift mid-window. Tickets pile up. Testing is compressed. Validation gets skipped. And before you know it, an un-documented, manual change that was supposed to be a “routine update” snowballs into a million-dollar outage.    

Why Network change is still an Achilles Heel:

●     Even the best-run network operations aren’t immune:

●     70% of outages stem from configuration errors (NetworkWorld)

●     80% of downtime incidents come from manual change mistakes (Broadcom)

●     84% of execs report losses exceeding $10,000 per incident, with 16% topping $1M (Digi)

Why Automating Network Change Matters Now

Even in the face of these challenges, many network teams still rely on tribal knowledge, siloed documentation, or ad hoc scripts. Manual processes, siloed tools, and fragmented visibility have made change management the weakest link in modern NetOps. The more distributed your network, the harder it becomes to maintain control. If DevOps can automate CI/CD pipelines for code, shouldn’t NetOps have the same for infrastructure?

Without automation:

●     Every manual change adds risk

●     Change velocity slows due to cautious change windows.

●     Audit gaps grow, exposing compliance and security risks.

●     Scale becomes unsustainable — especially when managing thousands of devices.

How IBM & NetBox Labs Are Helping You Take Control

Here, at IBM we have conversations about this issue with customers every day. 

In an effort to help customers solve this challenging issue, we researched several options, and ultimately determined that a network and infrastructure source of truth was critical to solving the issue. As an investor in NetBox Labs, the company offering the network and infrastructure management platform of choice globally, IBM knew NetBox was often used as a source of truth. The team quickly got to work developing a joint offering that could benefit networking and infrastructure teams.

Our new solution to this problem combines NetBox Labs, IBM Concert Workflows, and the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to create a full-loop automated solution that allows you to:

●     Define the intended state of your network in NetBox Cloud

●     Simulate changes before they’re pushed

●     Automate risk-based approvals

●     Execute at scale (via Ansible/Terraform) 

●     Continuously validate live state vs. intended

On December 8^th, IBM and NetBox will co-host a webinar to demonstrate different strategies to address the change management challenge.  We’ll walk through real world scenarios and demo a few options we’ve been working on to help network teams deliver fast, accurate configuration changes at scale, even as change windows continue to shrink.

Key Takeaways:

●     How to automate change at scale without compromising safety. 

●     Closing the loop – pre-change validation, simulation, & post-change validation. 

●     Amplify automation across your organization bringing your tools together. 

●     Real-world demo: NetBox Labs + IBM Concert Workflows and Ansible in action. 

Register now to join us for a practical, hands-on session designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of change management.