Network automation is the practice of automating load balancing, firewall policy management, application traffic management, and so on. Business process automation is the practice of bringing repetitive or highly complex tasks online and managing them through digital means. By automating, businesses free up the time spent on manual processes by their human workforce and delegate these tasks to a digital workforce.

Aside from the fact that a digital workforce can successfully produce and execute mundane work without becoming tired, these software-driven tools can also identify anomalies and complex data exceptions within enormous pools of data.

The most widely known data tools include robotic process automation (RPA), chatbots, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

Automation relies on timing and machine-to-machine communication to automate processes. Currently, the Modbus protocol is used in automated networks on factory floors to communicate between devices. The most widely used Ethernet network automation, however, is Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), which synchronizes all of the distributed clocks in a network over Layer 2 of the OSI model.