Puppet 8 is here, and it’s included in the latest release of Puppet Enterprise. It’s the biggest update to Puppet since Puppet 7’s first release in November 2020, and it carries a host of enhancements and improvements to make managing and scaling your infrastructure easier than ever. Read on for a list of the major changes included in Puppet 8, how they benefit you, and how to get going with Puppet 8 fast.

Chances are, you’re familiar with the strategy of adding an additional “9” to service level agreements (SLAs) to boost the experiences your organization provides. With plenty of ways to do so, there’s one that particularly stands out among the others: Service Blueprinting. Banking executive Lynn Shostack in 1984 first described a service blueprint in a Harvard Business Review publication.

The transition from traditional on-premises IT infrastructure to the public cloud has brought substantial relief to IT decision-makers and sysadmins. Since many organizations use Microsoft Windows as their preferred operating system, Microsoft Azure has become the public cloud provider of choice automatically owing to a familiar GUI and Active Directory sync.

Telecommunication (Telco) companies everywhere share a similar vision: future-proofing their organizations for an unpredictable era of challenges and opportunities in an unreliable economy. Rebounds from the pandemic started out slow and patchy, and leading up to present day, moves like inflation-laced price increases and merger and acquisition (M&A) deals have ramped up share prices across the global telecoms sector to climb back up from 2020’s rock bottom.

How automated are your automations? You (or your expert engineers) are probably spending hours on complicated PowerShell coding – writing, testing, reviewing, signing, and updating. What if there were a better way to coordinate your automations with workflows? Orchestrate multi-layer automated detection, communication, integration, and action.

A Dark Network Operations Center (NOC) is one that runs with no IT staff … at least that’s how it’s been defined up until now. But there’s more to interpret. Large, complex networks rely on the NOC — the core of network infrastructure — to keep them healthy and resilient. The NOC’s function allows employees, customers, partners, and other network users to rest a bit easier, and its integrity and accuracy gives them peace of mind.

If you moved to the cloud hoping for cost savings and scalability only to find that your cloud costs are ballooning, your cloud performance isn’t up to snuff, or you’re always struggling to align compliance regulations with your cloud deployment, it might be time to look into cloud repatriation as an alternative to public cloud infrastructure.

The telecommunications industry today is focused on delivering advanced, reliable connectivity and the highest possible performance to consumers, all while getting ahead of the cutthroat competition. And accomplishment in these key areas comes with its fair share of challenges for communications service providers (CSPs) to meet customer expectations.