Imagine it is Tuesday afternoon and your child is asking you to come to their soccer game to cheer them on. Of course, you want to attend, but that would mean you would have to leave the network you manage “behind” at one of the busiest times in the week. Will you go?
Thanks to Mobile Ops Center by World Wide Technology, the answer can be - Yes! Mobile Ops Center is a DNA Center open platform application that runs on your mobile phone. It connects you with your Cisco DNA based enterprise network’s vital health information, notifies you with any issues that need your attention, and even lets you initiate fixes for those issues on the fly. Now you can manage your network while being on the soccer field.
Mobile Ops Center uses the APIs available in the Cisco DNA Center open platform to read the vital analytics necessary to monitor the state of the network, and to initiate network changes if necessary. The abstraction facilitated by the APIs hides the otherwise massive underlying complexities necessary to perform these tasks, which has now made applications such as the Mobile Ops Center possible to develop. This is another example of how these open APIs have sparked developers’ imaginations and have led to some innovative applications.
Making network management mobile
Combining enterprise networking and mobility in a unique way, engineers at WWT realized that with network status so easily accessible through DNA Center open platform APIs, operators did not have to be tied down to computer consoles and traditional dashboards to manage their networks. With this breakthrough, they set out to create a mobile version of the DNA Center dashboard.
Mobile Ops Center utilizes DNA Center’s Intent APIs along with event notifications to act as an extension of DNA Center dashboard. Intent, or northbound, APIs provide a programmatic interface to access automation and assurance capabilities of DNA Center. Using these APIs, applications can create workflows combining several repetitive tasks so that engineers can focus on creating solutions instead. Mobile Ops Center uses the Command Runner API and ones that focus on DNA Center Assurance.
See the solution described by Andrew Rauscher of World Wide Technology.
Benefits
Mobile Ops Center app obtains network health data from DNA Center and displays a synopsis on its home screen. It receives notification alerts from DNA Center for any problem detected in the network. The app user is able to drill down to troubleshoot the issue from their mobile device and take any of the suggested actions to remedy it. Another major convenience Mobile Ops Center offers is the ability to search for network clients and their connected devices. For each device, one can trace their connectivity and check for any detected and unresolved problems. Mobile Ops Center really is one powerful application for an engineer on the go.
“At WWT we often discuss how to address the desire for network managers to do their jobs while becoming more mobile”, says Neil Anderson, Practice Manager, WWT. “However, these discussions often lead to far too many complexities in getting the right network visibility and control necessary to develop an application that would be useful. Now with the combination of abstraction, visibility, and control that DNA Center open platform provides, we are able to utilize a programmatic API approach to get what we need to develop the application and make it very useful. And we were able to do so with rather minimal investment and in a relatively short period of time”.
WWT demonstrated their Mobile Ops Center at Cisco Live event in Orlando last June. Feedback from many of the 20,000 plus customers who attended the event was overwhelmingly positive and WWT is now considering productizing the application.
Conclusion
With Mobile Ops Center, WWT has created a tool that offers the opportunity for network administrators to attend important off site events while also maintaining adequate monitoring and control of their networks. It exemplifies just one of the innovations that DNA Center open platform helps bring to reality.
Discover this solution and others from our DNA Center open platform partners and see how they are redefining the future of networking.
More for you
- Learn DNA Center APIs: https://developer.cisco.com/dnacenter/
- Learn how to create new revenue opportunities through service innovation: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/cloud-systems-management/dna-center/nb-09-idc-open-platform-analyst-rpt-ctp-en.pdf
- See how intent-based networking sparks business innovation: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/enterprise-networks/intent-based-networking-business-innovation.html
