The network touches every part of the technology stack; in all of the environments I have worked in, it is always a Tier-Zero service. It is a foundation service that other services rely on for their services to work. In the minds of other engineers, business managers, operators, and support staff, the network should just work. It should always be accessible and function correctly—a good network is a network that nobody hears about.
Of course, as network engineers, we know the network is as complex as any other technology stack. Due to its complexity, the constructs that make up a running network can be fragile at times. Sometimes, I look at a network and wonder how it can work at all, let alone how it's been running for months and years without business impacts.
Part of the reason we are interested in network automation is to...