The time for a better way to deploy and operate data centers and networks is mature now. New products in Cisco’s catalogue show a shared roadmap based on a common theme Cisco refers to as “Intent-Based Networking”. One such product, Cisco Network Assurance Engine (NAE) was publicly released at Cisco Live Barcelona this past January. NAE can provide configuration and state validation as well as security compliance testing for an ACI fabric. Gian Paolo Boarina looks at some of the details.