Accelerating NetOps transformation with Ansible Automation Platform

2025 was an incredible year for network operations (NetOps) and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. To address growing network complexity, Red Hat provided the tools NetOps teams needed to implement a strategic automation approach. 

Through major platform releases, new partner integrations, and global events, Red Hat helped customers achieve enterprise-wide network automation with Ansible Automation Platform. Let’s take a look back at the major network automation milestones that defined the year.

Key platform innovations 

In October, Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 launched, introducing new capabilities, platform enhancements, and strategic integrations to help customers build resilient and trusted foundations for modern IT operations. The 2.6 release highlighted 3 new features: 

• The new automation dashboard: Unlock more value with the new automation dashboard that allows you to measure the value and impact of automation initiatives.
• The new Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistant: Operate more efficiently with new Ansible Lightspeed intelligent assistant, allowing you to use gen AI to provide on-demand support for a more intuitive platform experience.
• The self-service automation portal: Achieve scalability in less time with the self-service automation portal, which allows you to quickly and easily scale automation service delivery to new users and teams

You can learn more about these new features in the Ansible Automation Platform 2.6 release blog. 

Partner ecosystem growth

Our Red Hat Ansible certified content ecosystem saw exponential growth in 2025 as well, enabling NetOps teams to unify their multivendor environments with proven, supported automation.

The new partner integrations and automation content include:

• Cisco: New validated content for Cisco Meraki was also released to automate cloud-controlled remote devices, including branch provisioning, troubleshooting via health checks, and Wifi key rotation use cases. The network.meraki_ops validated content collection takes advantage of the existing certified content collection, cisco.meraki.
• F5: F5 released the f5networks.f5_eda_security content collection to enable proactive security. By integrating Event-Driven Ansible with monitoring systems, this solution automatically updates Advanced Web Application Firewalls whenever an incident is detected. Advanced WAF devices are part of BIG-IP platform for application delivery and security services, and this content collection provides a starting point to extend event-driven automation into more F5 technologies.
• Gluware: We released the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for Gluware, which allows users to use Gluware's network automation suite and predefined use cases with Ansible Playbooks to allow for faster network automation.
• HPE Juniper: Red Hat and Juniper partnership produced multiple enhancements for our joint customers.
  • Ansible Automation Platform collection with Juniper Network provides a single, supported collection of modules and plugins for our customers, now available in the juniper.device certified content collection.
  • HPE Juniper has released a solution to automate Juniper Apstra and trigger event-driven automations by Kubernetes events, which can be achieved by using the juniper.apstra and juniper.eda collections.
• Multivendor inventory reports: New validated content gather, generate, persist, and visualize network resource inventory_reports for Arista EOS, Cisco IOS XE, Cisco IOS-XR, and Cisco NXOS devices.
• Multivendor health checks: New validated content with platform-agnostic roles  perform automated health checks across various network devices, including BGP, CPU, memory, uptime, environment, crashfiles, filesystem, and interfaces facts for Arista EOS, Cisco IOS XE, Cisco IOS-XR, and Cisco NXOS devices.
• Cisco Meraki ops
• NetBox Labs: In collaboration with NetBox Labs, we provided updated guidance, joint demos, and webinars. These resources helped customers to establish a network source of truth using the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for NetBox.
• Network to Code: New certified content was released to support network source-of-truth solutions, including a Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for expanded support for Nautobot.
• Nokia: New certified content was released to support Nokia Service Router Linux (SR Linux) network operating system (NOS). The nokia.srlinux collection is YANG-based and takes advantage of Nokia SR Linux YANG models.
• Red Hat OpenShift Networking: As of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, version 4.17, the OpenShiftSDN CNI plugin is deprecated. 

The network.offline_migration_sdn_to_ovnk collection helps you migrate the CNI network plugin from OpenShiftSDN to OVN-Kubernetes network plugin and perform rollback from OVN-Kubernetes to OpenShiftSDN.

• Splunk: New add-on integrates alerts from Splunk ITSI and Splunk ES with the Event-Driven Ansible decisioning capability. Delivered as a Splunkbase add-on, you can now automate response to Splunk alerts. Learn more in this blog or watch this webinar.  

Key events

Ansible Automation Platform experts kept busy this year attending several events across the globe, making sure that our users had many opportunities to learn and share best practices. A few of our top events include:

• Red Hat Summit and AnsibleFest 2025 (May): Now fully integrated into Red Hat Summit, the event offered in-depth network automation tracks, hands-on labs, and keynotes focused on scaling NetOps across the hybrid cloud.
• Red Hat Summit Connects: We brought the Summit experience to cities worldwide, providing local attendees with direct access to Ansible Automation Platform experts and interactive learning opportunities.
• AI Networking Summit: At this NYC event, we met with thought leaders to demonstrate how Ansible Automation Platform is paving the way for innovation in the network automation space.
• Cisco Live (EMEA and North America): We sponsored events in both regions to connect with partners and customers through technical sessions, labs, and one-on-one conversations.
• AutoCon: Organized by the Network Automation Forum in Austin, TX, this event allowed us to support the community mission of advancing network operations through automation. 

Top performing webinars

Throughout the year, we also published various virtual content around network automation. From highlighting partner updates to demonstrating the value of Ansible Automation Platform, these webinars support customers wanting to learn about network automation: 

• Next-level automation from Arista and Red Hat (April 2025) focuses on the key changes  with Arista and Ansible Automation Platform.
• Unifying multivendor environments through network automation (July 2025) explores  what is possible when you automate network management.
• Red Hat and Cisco: Streamline your Network Operations (October 2025) focuses on using Cisco Meraki and Ansible Automation Platform for network management.
• Exploring the Red Hat Ansible Certified Collection for NetBox (2025) addresses streamlining your network operations with NetBox.
• The Pillars of Successful Network Automation with Ansible (August 2025) explores Git integration, dynamic inventory, and AI enhancements.
• Red Hat Tech Journey: A series of webinars, demos, and workshops led by experts on Ansible Automation Platform.

New content

Over the course of 2025, we continued to provide our customers and users with updated content, including  new e-books, blogs, customer stories, and more. Top assets from this year include:

• Ebook: Network automation guide
• Demo: Transform your network operations - The power of Ansible and event-driven automation
• Blog: Automation unlocks 5G’s full potential: One New Zealand’s journey
• Customer story: DISA

Looking ahead to 2026

As we close out this year and look ahead to 2026, we are grateful for all that we have accomplished and are excited to discover the opportunities and growth that the new year will bring. Here are some things to look forward to: 

• Attend “The Automation Advantage: Accelerating Agility and Efficiency in the Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Era” with Infoblox on Wednesday, December 17. (See regional specific links to register.)
  • AMS
  • EMEA
  • APJ
• Join us for new webinars launching in our series starting in January.
• Catch us at Cisco Live EMEA in February.