The Network Automation Map: Navigate Your Journey with the NAF Automation Framework#

Damien Garros - OpsMill

• Why: Most automation programs stall in ad-hoc scripts and tool-specific arguments. NAF offers a tool-agnostic shared vocabulary that teams can use to assess maturity and compare architectures — useful regardless of your stack.
• What: The Network Automation Forum framework: seven functional building blocks — Intent, Collector, Observability, Executor, Orchestrator, Presentation, Infrastructure — each defined by purpose, MUST/SHOULD/MAY capabilities, and boundaries. Explicitly not a standard or reference architecture; a living community document. Tools map to multiple blocks and blocks to multiple tools (e.g., Infrahub = Intent + Presentation; SuzieQ/Kentik each span Collector → Observability → Presentation). A worked example rolls a new subnet out to 50 mixed-vendor NETCONF branches across 8 tools, including an automated drift-detect-and-remediate loop (Observability → Orchestrator → Executor → Collector → Observability).
• How: Functional decomposition first, tools second; each block has clear inputs/outputs so responsibility boundaries and tool gaps become visible. Backed by community docs on GitHub and a solution-wizard app.
• Where applicable: Any network automation program, any vendor mix — that is the point. No requirement to implement all blocks; start from your use case.