Cisco is embarking on the next stage of its intent-based networking plan, moving beyond the campus and data center to the WAN with Cisco SD-WAN vAnalytics and Cisco Meraki Insight.

Cisco announced its "Network.Intuitive" intent-based networking initiative last June as an effort to further network automation. In a recent interview with Light Reading, Heavy Reading Senior Analyst James Crawshaw said intent-based networking (IBN) is about having "a very high-level, simplistic language in which you basically ask the network what service you want it to deliver." (See Cisco Announces WAN Innovations and Intent-Based Networking: Marketing Hype or a Magic Bullet for Automation?)

Sachin Gupta, SVP of product management for Cisco Enterprise Networking, also spoke with Light Reading recently. He explained that Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)'s initial focus with IBN was on the data center and campus, and that the company is now focusing on building out automation and assurance for the WAN where he says troubleshooting issues have typically been more complicated.

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The new Cisco SD-WAN vAnalytics, designed as a cloud-based SaaS solution based on Viptela technology, delivers data and analysis for the WAN, and provides IT with the ability to predict application and bandwidth issues in advance.

"While SD-WAN has been focused a lot on automation, provisioning of the overlay circuits, better security and path selection, we wanted to marry that with the value we can bring to the table with analytics," said Gupta.

Alongside the vAnalytics offering, Cisco also announced Meraki Insight, which is integrated into the Meraki dashboard to provide IT with more visibility to WAN and SaaS application performance. Meraki Insight is also able to identify application issues in a remote data center or in the cloud.

"What we're bringing to the table here with analytics is taking all the data we're getting from the infrastructure to help customers really optimize those networks, optimize utilization and optimize the experience for the end users of those applications," said Gupta.

Read more at Light Reading about what Cisco is doing: Cisco Battles IT Blind Spots, Takes Network Intuitive to the WAN.

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— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading