AI-Infused NetBrain Next-Gen Platform Updated To Embrace Network Automation ‘Awakening’

‘There is an awakening happening around the necessity of [network automation] … Nobody can do live mapping and network automation like we can, but we’ve doubled down in this release on AI,’ NetBrain CMO Ryan Couch tells CRN.

Network automation specialist NetBrain Technologies has given its flagship platform an AI infusion to help automatically diagnose and remediate problems, before outages impact business, the company told CRN.

The release of NetBrain’s Next-Gen platform version 12.1 can help administrators automatically diagnose and remediate problems, “reverse engineer” ideal configurations, push automated scripts to all devices, and lets users interact with the network using natural language through an AI chatbot, according to the company.

“There is an awakening happening around the necessity of [network automation] … Nobody can do live mapping and network automation like we can, but we’ve doubled down in this release on AI,” NetBrain CMO Ryan Couch told CRN.

NetBrain’s Next-Gen is a no-code network automation platform that gives network professionals the tools they need for troubleshooting, continuous network assessment and protecting change across hybrid, multi-cloud networks, according to the Burlington, Mass.-based company.

[Related: NetBrain Adds Network Assessment, Automation Licenses To Partner Program: Exclusive]

Businesses rely on their network to drive revenue and they’re constantly assessing their network for efficiency, Couch said: “Of course, all of our partners will offer assessments across the network. ‘How is it optimized for this, or optimized for that?’ Our goal is to come in and say: ‘We provide you the tools to do those assessments very quickly.’”

NetBrain’s new Post-Mortem Assessments let administrators better evaluate outages by uncovering root causes and quick resolutions. It allows users to scan the entire network — hybrid cloud and on-premises included — for similar risks for faster remediation, the company said. From there, administrators can use the new Golden Assessment, which is part of the Golden Engineering Studio introduced in October, to further lower the barrier to automation discovery and creation and continuous outage prevention, the company said.

Postmortem assessments can help partners and customers uncover “ticking time bombs” in their network, Couch said.

“They’re actually saving future breaches from happening, saving future outages, which, of course, is millions of dollars,” he said. “I think the relationship between what the partners bring in terms of the holistic assessment across their business, with the unique capabilities of NetBrain to do postmortem assessments, or we call golden assessments … is value that we bring to their customers.”

To take the Reverse Engineering feature a step further, which was introduced in Next-Gen’s last release, administrators can now create a live Digital Twin of their network to pull in device details and configurations and policies. The new Live Data feature collects real-time information from traditional devices and third-parties, such as AWS.

NetBrain is also helping to automate manual workflows with mini assessments to simplify complex workflows and eliminate room for outages and bottlenecks, the company said. The new Triple Defense feature protects networks before, during, and after changes to help prevent errors.

“In discovering why an outage happened, oftentimes, it’s because there was a manual process that wasn’t updated and you didn’t have automation,” Couch said.

The latest release of Next-Gen is putting more continuous observability capabilities in the hands of customers and partners with AI and automation, Couch said.

“There are outcomes like compliance objectives, like network uptime, like reducing human touch, and all these things are what enterprises globally are trying to execute. NetBrain does more than just give you visibility on your map, but it allows you to have proactive observability. You can actually set up automations with AI to drive those outcomes around the clock, as opposed to having that one technician who knows all the ins and outs of the network that goes in and fixes things when things break,” he said.

According to market research firm Gartner, 30 percent of enterprises in 2026 will automate more than half of their network activities, an increase from less than 10 percent in 2023, representing a big area of opportunity for partners to help customers, Couch said.

Last year, NetBrain made full-functionality licenses, or “copies” of the Next-Gen platform available to the channel for customer demos to demonstrate the power of automation and continuous network assessment, the company told CRN at the time.

NetBrain technology is used by more than one-third of the Fortune 500. The company’s annual recurring revenue in 2024 grew nearly 25 percent year over year and customer growth increased by 100 percent, which the company attributed to growing interest in network automation.

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