‘Twas the night before Christmas and I longed for my house
With one hand on the keyboard and one on my mouse.
Predicting the traffic demand into the night,
Yet making sure that the loads remained light.
I poured over many screens to check the flows,
Watching as network traffic steadily grows.
Slipping into a sweat and my team in a tizzy,
Reviewing every metric, till we were dizzy.
And then from around the room arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my chair to see what was the matter.
But all I could see were alert storms and warnings,
And I feared what was coming in the next mornings.
For on this night, demand for data and digital services started to soar,
An exponential growth, that every minute brought more.
Streaming videos and online games without delay,
I watched as bandwidth shrunk and capacity slipped away.
Then I stared at my iPhone, as it started ringing wildly,
I got 70 messages, and that’s putting it mildly.
Customers were reporting a latency drag,
So on this Christmas Day my spirits began to sag.
Now, edge, access, peering, and core!
I felt like I was taking the network to war.
As I struggled valiantly and kept up the fight,
Hoping to meet shifting customer demands tonight.
I reviewed my dashboards looking for any salvation,
Cried and shouted to share my frustration.
I felt the impact of our cost cuts and cutbacks,
And combed every part of the server room racks.
Tomorrow I hoped to wake up from this horrific dream,
Grateful that I’m still a part of the networking operations team.
And now I know that our network is far too complex,
We had to find another way to meet demand, and inform our execs!
In the blink of an eye and with a twist of my head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
I spoke not a word, and went straight back to work,
I had found the right fix for our network.
Then I turn’d and laid a finger aside my nose,
Giving a nod to my team, and then I rose.
I sprang from my desk, looking around, being quick,
And I knew that a Network Cloud would do the trick!
A disaggregated software-based network, that is cloud-native,
Running on standard white -boxes – that are open and innovative!
I heard everyone exclaim, that I was absolutely right-
So Merry Christmas to all…and to all – a good night.