Overview
Product Information on NetBrain Next-Gen
What is NetBrain Next-Gen?
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Overall experience with NetBrain Next-Gen
“Network Mapping Tool Enhances Transparency but Raises Concerns Over Cost and AI”
“High Complexity Limits Usability Despite Advanced Features and Useful Capabilities”
About Company
Company Description
NetBrain Automation, founded in 2004, provides a no-code network automation and visibility platform. The essential aim is to enable network operators and engineers to enhance their key workflows associated with hybrid network management. Utilizing Intents, NetBrain manages diverse vendor and multi-cloud infrastructures using a top-down method rather than merely on device configuration management. It creates a thorough digital twin of a complete hybrid network, from edge to cloud, comprehensively recognizing each component's role. Consequently, operators and engineers can maintain network stability by managing only their intended outcomes. In particular, NetBrain helps large enterprises and managed services providers to simplify management tasks, reduce repair times, ensure compliance, and gain a top-down understanding of network support for their business needs. The organization is based in Burlington, Massachusetts, with personnel in the US, Canada, Germany, the UK, India, and China.
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NetBrain Next-Gen Likes & Dislikes
The ability of this tool to generate visuals is probably the biggest selling point and for good reason. The generated content can not only be taken as a snap shot but also can be viewed live when trouble shooting. Support from the vendor has also been rock solid as some of our questions were as simple as how can we do this all the way up to how can we customize and automate some reporting aspects to generate more insights from the tool. Lastly being able to quickly trouble shoot, and keyword here is quickly has really reduced our incident response time that we actually reduced some of our SLA agreements. This tool is also starting to infuse AI into it which is really icing on the cake and is exciting as this product continues to improve
I like the path calculation and the config search.
While testing it on a few of our accelerators, the dynamic maps feature is something I really loved. It is really useful feature as it instantly visualized the path of our application across a multiple complex hybrid network and overlayed live health data on top of it. One more feature which really caught my attention was that it turned abstract configuration data into a clear visual context that was easy to explain to my team members.
The largest concern for us is really you get what you pay for and while this tool has a rich feature set for our networking team, it is proving costly as it has eaten into the budget quite a bit that justification for this tool has come under some scrutiny. It would be great if there were more aspects of the tool that we could pick and choose from in order to customize a reasonably priced package for our team. Another concern or area of improvement is that while the AI infusion into this product can at times be really eye opening, it can also get in the way of trouble shooting sometimes as it has suggested things that were not accurate and it took away some of our trouble shooting time. One other area of improvement is it would be great if more canned reports could be self service generated from the tool as it stands we export our data to another team to help with reporting.
I don't like the level of complication. Many of the workflows and tasks should be simplified, otherwise people will keep avoiding to make use of the tool. Also each single module is crazy expensive, which makes us avoid buying new useful modules.
The primary drawback that I observed was with licensing, as it was expensive to scale for smaller teams like ours. Moreover, the licensing model itself was quite complex for frequently fluctuating network sizes. In addition to this, me and couple of my colleagues experienced a bit of learning curve for building custom runbooks.
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Peer Discussions
NetBrain Next-Gen Reviews and Ratings
- Data EngineerGov't/PS/EdEducationReview Source
Network Mapping Tool Enhances Transparency but Raises Concerns Over Cost and AI
This tool was a welcome addition for our networking team as they finally had a tool that would help reduce the number of inbound questions to them regarding how things were mapped or worked. The network mapping and being able to visualize it really helped to streamline these conversations with end users as well as trouble shooting as path analysis was more easily done along with performance monotiring for any spikes or blocks. We really enjoyed being able to finally expose our network not only as a generated map but at times a live map to really make things transparent for all team members. This helped our network team to not only visualize but also in real time trouble shoot bottle necks before issues impacted more of our network. - Engineer<50M USDBankingReview Source
Best Network Visibility and Automation
After having used NetBrain for a few weeks now, overall my experience has been really positive I would say. One aspect is while measuring our in-house metrics like MTTI and MTBF, I noticed there is a significant reduction in time while using the product. Another aspect, which that helped me a lot was the ability to automate troubleshooting steps instead of using CLI commands everytime. The only downside which I noticed is the initial setup and steep learning curve for the newer intent-based automation features. - Programmar Analyst10B+ USDIT ServicesReview Source
Powerful network visibility and automation, with a noticeable learning curve
Overall, NetBrain Next-Gen has been a strong addition to our network operations toolkit. The ability to automatically discover the network and generate dynamic maps has significantly reduced troubleshooting time. It helps engineers quickly understand dependencies and current network state instead of relying on outdated documentation. The platform is powerful, but initial setup and rule configuration take time and require good network knowledge. Once tuned properly, it delivers consistent value for incident analysis and change validation. - Manager of Connectivity Tools team50M-1B USDHealthcare and BiotechReview Source
NetBrain Enhances Path Analysis and Device Insights
The NetBrain tool provides a really good experience when troubleshooting any network issue. It can quickly detect any problems and report to your ticketing system (SNOW etc.). It can even run certain runbooks, so if you have basic health check or sanity check commands it can immediately add these outputs to the ticket log. - Operations Associate10B+ USDEnergy and UtilitiesReview Source
Excellent overall topology mapping, yet lacks the ability to favorite specific devices or customize the landing page.
I have been very impressed with the level of detail NetBrain provides for our network topology.