Overcoming the Alarm Avalanches Era

As networks become increasingly complex, I&O teams face a new challenge: alarm avalanches.

In today's world of interconnected technologies—on-premises data centers, private clouds, public clouds, and hybrid environments—the sheer volume of alarms can overwhelm teams, drowning out critical issues that need immediate attention.

While these advancements have driven new capabilities, they have also introduced a staggering increase in network alarms, complicating the work of Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) teams.

The 2010s: The Rise of the Alarm Deluge

Alarm overload first became a prominent issue in the 2010s, as enterprises embraced cloud technologies, DevOps, and CI/CD pipelines. These innovations allowed for faster deployment and increased agility, but also resulted in a flood of alarms.

I&O teams found themselves spending an excessive amount of time validating and investigating alerts, only to discover that many were false positives. Critical alarms were often drowned out by low-priority or erroneous alerts, wasting valuable time and leading to missed opportunities for immediate remediation.

In this era, the manual processes that had once worked for smaller, simpler networks became unsustainable. The more interconnected the systems, the harder it became to differentiate between minor glitches and serious network problems.

2024 and Beyond: The Automation Revolution in Alarm Management

With the growing complexity of networks, the answer to alarm overload is clear: automation.

Manual responses to alarms are no longer enough to keep up with the scale and speed of today's environments. Network automation introduces a more efficient, scalable approach, transforming how I&O teams handle alarm management.

Through automation, false positives can be filtered out immediately, allowing teams to focus only on legitimate issues. Automation not only reduces the noise from unnecessary alerts but enhances response times through auto-remediation. Routine tasks—such as triaging, diagnosing, and resolving low-level issues—are handled by automation, eliminating a significant portion of alarms from the team's workload.

WATCH: The Art of Automation – Incident Response. See an example of the art of the possible when automations are automatically kicked off by alerts.

With automation handling alerts as soon as they come in and eliminating false positives, only the most pressing alarms are in the hands of I&O experts, allowing them to concentrate their efforts where they matter most.

It creates a situation where teams are no longer "trapped in time," bogged down by an endless stream of alerts, but are instead empowered to address real issues quickly and efficiently.

The Path Forward: Seize the Automation Advantage

For telecom operators, the transition from manual alarm management to automation is no longer optional—it's essential. Automating alarm responses not only frees up your team to focus on high-priority tasks but also provides a solid foundation for future innovations, including AI-driven network operations. The time for I&O teams to evolve and adopt network automation is now.

To explore how automation can transform your approach to alarm management and streamline your operations, download our eBook: Trapped in Time: 3 NetOps Processes to Modernize ASAP.