Forward Networks, IP Fabric, and Slurp’it Partner with NetBox Labs to Accelerate Network Discovery, Validation and Assurance, Compliance, and Other Key Network Automation Use Cases
New York, January 31, 2024 – NetBox Labs, the open source startup transforming network management and automation, today announced technology and commercial partnerships with the leading providers of network discovery, assurance, and validation ecosystem to ease and accelerate networking teams’ adoption of modern network automation architectures. Forward Networks, IP Fabric, and Slurp’it have partnered with NetBox Labs to deliver automated discovery of networks into NetBox Cloud, the industry leading network source of truth, to simplify and expedite NetBox implementation for networking teams. In addition, all three vendors have joined NetBox Labs in offering bundled integrations with NetBox Cloud to enable ongoing network assurance and validation workflows, ensuring reliability and performance for networks with a modern intent-based architecture.
With these partnerships, NetBox Cloud customers:
- Eliminate manual discovery and data entry for zero cost: Leverage Slurp’it and IP Fabric for free to automate “Day 1” discovery of networks and populate NetBox Cloud’s network data model, accelerating time to value with NetBox Cloud
- Easily implement ongoing network assurance and validation: Integrate solutions from Forward Networks, IP Fabric, or Slurp’it, with NetBox Cloud as the Network Source of Truth
- Gain new insight for compliance checks: Leverage data from NetBox Cloud’s model to augment data in partner platforms and address other key network observability and operations use cases such as compliance validation
“At NetBox Labs, our mission is to make it easier to build and manage complex networks. Centralizing network documentation and adoption of NetBox as a network source of truth unlocks and accelerates the path to modern network automation architectures,” said Kris Beevers, CEO and co-founder of NetBox Labs. “With today’s announcements, we demonstrate the power of NetBox’s open, composable ecosystem. NetBox Cloud customers can now leverage powerful tools from multiple NetBox Labs partners to speed their adoption of NetBox, integrate network assurance workflows, and scale their network automation. We’re thrilled to be working with Forward Networks, IP Fabric, and Slurp’it, and we’re committed to continuing our investment in the NetBox ecosystem to empower networking teams to move faster and operate with confidence.”
The joint solutions with NetBox Cloud and Forward Networks, IP Fabric, and Slurp’it are all available today. Teams can learn more about these solutions and get started immediately by visiting netboxlabs.com/discovery.
According to David Erickson, CEO and Co-founder of Forward Networks, “one of the key differentiators of Forward Enterprise, our network digital twin platform, is the amount of data we collect from large, complex enterprise networks. Our collaboration with NetBox Labs enables security, cloud, and network teams to benefit from using network inventory data as a source of truth to drive automation, as well as improved auditing and compliance.”
“Using NetBox Cloud and IP Fabric together significantly reduces the barrier to entry, offering a solution to the key problem of onboarding NetBox with real network data, says Daren Fulwell, Head of Product Evangelism at IP Fabric. “IP Fabric provides comprehensive discovery and assurance of your network, as well as all the data to initially populate IPAM and DCIM elements of your NetBox instance from inventory and topology, to config and state. Once your NetBox Cloud instance is onboarded, the snapshots generated in IP Fabric’s Network Assurance platform provide a full picture of observed truth to be measured and diff’d with the intended state as defined in NetBox, enabling assurance workflows. Our plugin allows you to see what has changed, giving you the option of actioning remediation activity or updating the Source of Intended Truth. We’re proud and excited to be announcing this partnership with the NetBox Labs team, and will be sharing the stage at the upcoming Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live in Amsterdam to showcase our complementary technologies.”
“At Slurp’it, we focus on simplifying Network Discovery,” said Wim Gerrits, CEO of Slurp’it. “Through our collaboration with NetBox Labs, customers can effortlessly import discovered network data into NetBox. This is essential for managing the differences between actual and intended network state, and when starting with network automation. The Slurp’it plugin seamlessly integrates both products, streamlining the onboarding and reconciliation process.”
About NetBox Labs
NetBox Labs helps companies build and manage complex networks. We help customers accelerate network automation by delivering open, composable products and supporting the network automation community.
The company’s NetBox Cloud product offers an enterprise-grade, SaaS version of open source NetBox — the world’s most popular network source of truth. NetBox Labs is the commercial steward of NetBox and Orb, the next-generation open source network observability platform.With dozens of customers like Dartmouth College, Malwarebytes, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, and Vermont State College System; and backed by investment from GGV Capital, Grafana Labs CEO Raj Dutt, Flybridge, IBM, Salesforce Ventures, and Mango Capital; NetBox Labs is building the open, composable network automation stack for networking teams. Sign up for updates at https://netboxlabs.com/newsletter.
