You were only six (and you may not remember this …), when you intended to be an astronaut. Intent is a wonderful thing, but for an astronaut, it ain’t enough to survive outer space. Imagine yourself entering Venus’s atmosphere when you suddenly hear an alarm! Your spacesuit’s heat shield – meant to protect you from the constant rising temperature – is failing! But, in your comms device you hear the comforting sounds of your command center. “No problemo, hombre, that shield will hold. We’ve got your back.” Now, that’s assurance!
When we manage large, complex systems, we wish we had intent assurance – the promise of knowing the system will figure out what it needs and then do it. But, as Roland Acra mentioned in his blog, Introducing the Cisco Network Assurance Engine, almost everything we do in our data center today is reactive.
