NEW YORK, Dec. 19, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NetBox Labs and Network Automation Forum (NAF) today announce the convergence of the network automation industry’s two foremost events, NetDevOps Days from NetBox Labs and NAF’s AutoCon. The AutoCon event series will continue forward in 2024, with the energy of the NetDevOps Days community and team boosting the momentum built at NAF’s inaugural event, AutoCon 0, in November. The resulting singular event series, AutoCon, will converge network automation thought leaders, engineers, and executives and accelerate the industry.
“NetBox Labs built something special with NetDevOps Days, and injected a huge shot of energy into the network automation community,” said Scott Robohn, co-founder, Network Automation Forum. “When I met the NetBox Labs team at NetDevOps Days in New York, and again at AutoCon 0, it was obvious that our visions were incredibly aligned and our passion for accelerating the network automation community was shared. We’re thrilled to welcome the NetDevOps Days community to NAF and we can’t wait to see everyone at AutoCon 1 in the spring!”
The NAF and NetBox Labs teams will hold an open virtual panel session for the network automation community to discuss the combination and look ahead to the future of AutoCon and network automation, online on Thursday, January 18 at 11:00am EST / 4:00pm UTC. Register to join the interactive session via Zoom: https://networkautomation.forum/netdevopsdays-virtual-panel.
Both NetDevOps Days and AutoCon sprang to life in 2023 independently, but the events’ paths quickly converged, with complimentary content and a singular focus on helping network practitioners accelerate their network automation journeys. And both demonstrated that the demand from the community is massive. NetDevOps Days London in June was conceived and announced by NetBox Labs just over 30 days before the event, sold out twice with nearly 150 attendees, and lit the fire. NetDevOps Days New York in October furthered that momentum. AutoCon 0 in Denver amplified it to a new pitch, capturing nearly twice its target audience and achieving overwhelmingly positive reviews from more than 340 attendees.
“Our mission at NetBox Labs is to make it easier to build and manage complex networks, and that means increasing adoption of network automation. NetBox is critical to the network automation architectures of thousands of companies, and yet we couldn’t find a forum for these practitioners to converge, converse, and accelerate, so we made one with NetDevOps Days,” said Kris Beevers, co-founder and CEO of NetBox Labs. “We were thrilled to see the emergence of NAF and AutoCon at the same time. We’re fundamentally a product company at NetBox Labs, and while we’re incredibly proud of what we and the community have built with NetDevOps Days, we believe in AutoCon as the best forum to continue the conversation. So we’re putting all the energy of NetBox Labs and the NetBox community into AutoCon and we can’t wait to see everyone at the next event!”
The combination of NetDevOps Days and AutoCon will amplify the network automation conversation by bringing together more diverse insights from a wider range of perspectives and experiences, will deliver enhanced networking with an even large community of like-minded networking pros, and will afford sponsors greater opportunities to connect with their audiences and be part of the conversation.
The next AutoCon event, AutoCon 1, will take place in Europe in May 2024, with AutoCon 2 in the United States slated for November 2024. The Network Automation Forum’s website has more details and a newsletter to receive updates on registration, a Slack group to join the community conversation, and more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Will there be any more NetDevOps Days?
A. No - NetDevOps Days has merged into the AutoCon event series and those who’ve been looking forward to attending, speaking, or sponsoring the next NetDevOps Days should head for AutoCon!
Q. Will NetBox Labs continue to host other events in the future?
A. Yes - NetBox Labs hosts other events, especially for the NetBox community. There will be a number of NetBox meetups and workshops globally in 2024, so sign up for our community newsletter to keep informed.
Q. How will this change NAF and the AutoCon events?
A. This will add even more momentum to the conversation around accelerating network automation happening within the vendor neutral NAF community.
The Network Automation Forum
The Network Automation Forum (NAF) exists to build a community among network operations engineers, automation and AI SMEs, supporting vendors, and any others with an interest in advancing the state of network operations through automation, orchestration, and observability.
The NAF is a community for information exchange, constructive discussion and debate, and the support of useful ideas, architectures, and tools for superior network operations through effective automation. Learn more at https://networkautomation.forum.
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.
