My early enterprise surveys from 30 years ago showed that the largest reported source of network outages was human error. Today, that’s still the case, and in fact human error leads any equipment or transmission cause by a larger margin today than it did 30 years ago. This, despite the fact that enterprises say they’ve invested significantly in improving, simplifying, and automating network operations. The old saying, “We have met the enemy and they are us,” sure seems to apply.
If you ask network operations professionals, most will tell you that the problem is that network complexity is growing faster than operations management can cope with.