4 reasons to consider a network digital twin

The use of digital twins – digital representations of physical objects or systems – is on the rise. Enterprises can use digital twins to replicate their IT environments, including infrastructure, network equipment, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and then run simulations to test the impact of changes and to optimize performance. They can be used to validate the current state of a network, for example, and test configuration changes, firmware updates, or adjustments to security policies.

Digital twin technologies are gaining traction because of their potential to bridge the gap between physical and virtual worlds, according to Grand View Research, which says the global digital-twin market is forecast to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38% from 2023 to 2030. Incorporating technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and IoT into digital twin systems is expected to boost market growth in the forecast period, Grand View says.

Digital twins have had appeal in certain industries – manufacturing, oil and gas, utilities, mining – “basically physical, high-capital, asset-intensive verticals,” says Jonathan Lang, research director, worldwide IT/OT convergence strategies, at research firm IDC.

In these settings, the rationale for digital twins has been clear, thanks to potential benefits that include better visibility into the health of assets, improved reliability, cost savings, and the ability to ensure stable operations, Lang says. “IT environments such as infrastructure, network equipment, connected devices, etc., have the same value drivers,” he says.

Digital twin news

Although digital twins have been around for some time, it’s still an early adopter technology. But the number of vendors that offer digital twin solution is growing, and recent upgrades to digital twin offerings include:

• Forward Networks launched AI Assist, a generative AI feature built into its Forward Enterprise digital twin platform. The addition is designed to give network and security operations professionals comprehensive insights into network performance via natural language prompts. With AI assist, network engineers of varying skill levels can conduct sophisticated network queries, so they can quickly assess network behavior and identify potential issues.
• Juniper Networks introduced Marvis Minis, an AI-native networking digital experience twin that uses the company’s Mist AI technology to proactively simulate user connections. That way it can instantly validate network configurations and detect problems without users being present. The Minis product simulates end-user, client, device and application traffic to learn the network configuration through unsupervised ML, and to proactively highlight network issues. Data from Minis is continuously fed back into Mist AI, providing an additional source of insight for the best responses.
• Nokia extended the capabilities of its existing Nokia Network Digital Twin to include all Android devices, the company announced late last year. Coverage and performance data for Wi-Fi, private and public cellular networks can be automatically collected in real time and processed on Nokia’s edge platform to give enterprises a view of how changes in their operations impact network performance.

Here are some key reasons why organizations should consider deploying digital twins.

Stronger security

Enhancing cybersecurity is always a high priority for organizations, and network digital twins can improve the security posture of IT infrastructures in a number of ways.

“Today’s security, network, and cloud operations teams lack access to a single source of truth for network topology, behavior, configuration, segmentation and policy information,” says Chiara Regale, senior vice president, product and user experience at Forward Networks. “This means they are expected to manage and secure a network they cannot see, and [that] often includes unknown devices.”

Enterprise networks might support tens to hundreds of thousands of devices running billions of lines of configuration code, and include multiple clouds, Regale says. “Even if an organization had unlimited resources and money, there’s no way that the human brain can keep up with that complexity,” he says.

Network, security and other teams might have several monitoring tools at their disposal, “but because they are siloed and have varying degrees of data accuracy and timeliness, they create more complexity,” Regale says.

Unlike mapping, verification, or observability tools, network digital twins help make sense of all network behavior, providing contextualized, reliable and actionable data to operations engineers, Regale says. They collect configuration and state information across all network devices, including load balancers, routers, firewalls, and switches, as well as cloud environments.

“This data is then used to calculate all possible paths within the network, analyze detailed behavioral information, and make network configuration and behavior searchable and verifiable,” Regale says. “Network digital twins offer noteworthy security benefits, including critical vulnerability identification and prioritized remediation plans specific to individual device configurations and features in use.”

Network digital twins also have the ability to accelerate incident response analysis by defining the reach of a compromised host in an instant, Regales says, significantly reducing post-incident remediation time and limiting exposure by isolating the host much faster. 

“Because a network digital twin collects on every device in the network, you not only get an always current topology—with the ability to view the entire network or drill down to a single location or device—but you also get current information on network inventory,” Regale says.

Improved documentation

Digital twin technology can provide insights into the infrastructure beyond just configurations, including what the environment is doing at any given time. This is essential for successful documentation.

“Every enterprise is terrible at documentation, due to priorities around delivery, lack of standards on how to record infrastructure changes, and sprawl,” says Michael Wynston, director of network architecture and automation at financial services firm Fiserv.

The firm is using information from Forward Networks’ digital twin platform to help with documentation. This has enabled the company to identify devices that had never been properly decommissioned or onboarded, unmanaged devices for removal or remediation, circuits that had never been properly decommissioned, and equipment that had been decommissioned.

“Without knowing what your infrastructure is doing, you know nothing about your infrastructure,” Wynston says. “Without a digital twin, you do not know your perimeter, you do not know the risks from CVE [common vulnerabilities and exposures], you cannot implement automation. It can paralyze the infrastructure.”

Lack of up-to-date documentation for an infrastructure leads to a lack of understanding of what was built, why it was built and what it should be doing, Wynston says. “This leads further to an overall lack of infrastructure hygiene, as we cannot sustain and secure what we do not know exists,” he says.

Better digital experiences

Much has been made of the importance of providing excellent user experiences in digital environments, whether it be customers navigating an online purchase process or employees trying to access vital information from a server.

Twins can help enhance digital experience, which is the sum of a user’s digital-based interactions with a product, service, device, etc. Given how many points of interaction exist within a typical enterprise, digital experience is a priority.

“Digital experience twins are a new concept that virtualizes an end user, application, or IoT device to validate the network experience and predict problems before they impact user experience,” says Bob Friday, chief AI officer at Juniper Networks.

“These digital experience twins are versatile, seamlessly integrating into live networks operating on existing IT infrastructure,” Friday says. “In today’s world, ensuring seamless connectivity and optimizing user, device, and application experiences are paramount for driving business success.”

Digital twins and digital experience twins are vital tools to ensure the expected behavior of the network, validate security, and assure user experience before users or devices experience issues on the network that can impact the business Friday.

Greater efficiency

Digital twins enable simulation of data across multiple business systems. IDC research has shown that IT organizations are losing lots of time searching for necessary information to perform a job function, Lang says.

“By unifying the data in a single interface, as well as performing analysis across multiple data sets, digital twins improve worker efficiency and the quality and accuracy of analytical outputs,” he says.

Digital twins offer user interfaces into complex processes and data sets that are more intuitive and approachable to interact with for non-technical audiences, Lang says. “This means the skilled labor barrier is lower,” he says. “Lines of business can be more self-sufficient, and people can more rapidly and accurately interpret data to drive improved decision-making.”

One example of increased efficiency from digital twins comes from a large multi-national automotive manufacturer cited by Dan Issacs, general manager and CTO of the Digital Twins Consortium, a global ecosystem of users who are driving best practices for digital twin usage and defining requirements for new digital twin standards.

The automotive company’s IT infrastructure includes more than 5,000 servers, with each twin of a server having more than 400 data points from multiple systems and running 2,000 events per second, Issacs says.

The digital twin of the IT infrastructure brings “the integration of the multiple disparate IT management systems into a single view for cross system event monitoring, prediction and action triggering to achieve optimized outcomes,” Issacs says. It enables operational efficiency, through the ability to predict infrastructure and even help prevent unplanned downtime, he says.

In general, digital twins provide a comprehensive view of network performance and usage patterns, potentially providing improved analysis, greater coverage, more accurate predictive analytics, and enhanced management approaches, Isaacs says.