What if I told you that the most impactful changes to the networking industry are already on the horizon? And that the way companies manage the associated transitions will determine not just who wins and loses but who survives? And what if I told you that virtually none of this is dominated by artificial intelligence?

The networking industry is going through a massive set of changes. It's impossible to ignore things like infrastructure as code, intent-based networking, model-driven management and AIOps. But in an industry that sees a technology wave roll through about every 18 months, organizations are conditioned to spot, evaluate and ultimately handle technology changes.

You know what our industry is less experienced at handling? Fundamental shifts in the workforce. And that's precisely what we are about to see.

A new workforce born in the cloud

The heyday of network engineering was the mid-1990s and early 2000s. When the internet was still in its formative years, networking was hot. Universities were training cohorts of would-be networking professionals, and there was no shortage of opportunities awaiting them when they entered the workforce. In many ways, the foundation of networking was as much sweat equity as it was the hardware and software that moved the packets.

That workforce today? We're an aging lot, and as we approach the end of our network engineering careers, we need to develop some hypotheses about the next generation of networkers. Are they going to come out of university with networking degrees and vendor certifications? Or are they more likely to be well-versed in all things cloud and familiar with an entirely different ecosystem of tools and techniques?

The implications of this are more than merely staffing decisions and recruitment techniques.

Tomorrow’s network team can’t work with systems from the past

Companies that have operational models anchored to the past—dominated by manual workflows executed using a slate of arcane vendor-specific CLI commands—will find it nearly impossible to leverage a workforce born in the cloud. The certifications that serve as a proxy for capability will be in short supply. Even worse, that supply will be hotly contested by the companies struggling to keep things afloat as their workforces turn over.

Not to be too blunt but building a network team for the future using systems and people from the past will be the most expensive possible way to manage a network. Paradoxically, the organizations in the worst position to absorb the resulting costs -because IT is a cost center and they aren't technology-forward - will be the ones that bear the brunt of these effects. It's not a looming problem so much as an existential crisis.

The solution should be easy, right? Just start hiring people earlier. Build a talent pipeline so that the workforce crisis never really materializes. But it's not that simple. Networking is hard. It's a highly specialized discipline that requires a lot of training, most of which can’t come from a class or a book.

For most organizations, the details that support the network are stored in a combination of loosely defined systems or documents and the heads of the people that have built and maintained the network for years. For all our advances in tooling, things like troubleshooting are still remarkably difficult processes for all but the most experienced workers.

Workforce evolution is inevitable

Now imagine hiring a cloud-first technologist proficient in Kubernetes and familiar with AWS and Azure techniques. It's not that they aren't technical. But how do they even begin to fill the gaping holes left by retiring network engineers that feed themselves with shell scripts and hand-drawn network diagrams taped to the wall behind their four-monitor setup?

This workforce evolution is going to happen for every company. Sure, it might be two years away for company A and seven years for company B, but the day of reckoning will come.

The question for teams today is: What can I do today to better prepare for that day?

From vendor specialists to network architects

Some of the preparation ought to be obvious. The supply chain shock of the last few years should have taught us all that the future is decidedly multivendor. This means that operations will need to evolve from tightly integrated CLI constructs to abstract control.

Technology initiatives like intent-based networking are useful here, because the declarative concepts they use abstract the user interface from the underlying devices. The natural byproduct of declarative approaches is that the de facto standard user interface shifts from CLI to something vendor-agnostic. This reduces the reliance on vendor-specific certifications, which opens the potential talent pool. Of course, these people still need to be skilled networking professionals, but their skills need to be rooted in the underlying architectures rather than the supporting commands proffered by one supplier or another.

It’s all about a shift of technology

If the next-generation workforce is skilled in cloud, the toolchains they know will be different as well. It seems clear that Kubernetes is the standard operating system for the cloud. The flexible and extensible nature of Kubernetes allows it to be applied in other domains, including networking. Efforts to introduce emerging tools into current network environments will dramatically simplify follow-on activities, including recruitment.

This was one of the main drivers for our new data center network automation platform, called Event-Driven Automation (EDA). EDA builds on the Kubernetes framework. It naturally inherits from the rich ecosystem of Kubernetes tools and leverages a large open-source community that is popular with the next generation of networkers.

Smart organizations will begin planning now. Trying to foist change onto a well-established team for the sake of change seems unwise. But leveraging natural expansion and refresh opportunities to evaluate new technology is prudent. Positioning technical leaders to be part of the solution is essential. No one wants to see their life’s work stranded because the next crop of workers couldn’t sustain it. Setting explicit goals to build the technology bridges from yesterday to tomorrow is an effective way to put both generations on the same side of the problem.

And let’s not forget that these new tools and techniques have actually driven an operational wedge between the titans of technology and everyone else. It's not just adopting new technology for the sake of recruitment. It's setting organizations up to be relevant. The worst possible outcome would be to fall behind because of technology and people, have to overpay just to keep the lights on, and end up failing as competitors pass you by.

Take the next step towards the future

It’s time to consider new tools that will help you embrace the cloud and capitalize on the unique skills of the next generation of networkers. Visit the EDA web page to find out how it leverages Kubernetes and how easy it can be to integrate a rich ecosystem of tools and clouds and automate your entire data center network lifecycle.