How to Improve Productivity Across Network Test Labs

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Improve Global Network Test Lab Productivity

Network equipment and security vendors run test labs to reproduce customer environments, investigate support cases, and execute regression testing. Engineers need the right devices, firmware, and topology on demand, and must release resources promptly so others can use them. Lab managers need to prioritize critical work and plan equipment purchases based on actual use. One network security leader operates five global labs supporting more than 400 engineers and more than 8,500 customer-specific configurations per year. Each setup requires changing devices, cabling, firmware, and configurations, then returning equipment to a known-good state.

Manual operation makes this workflow costly. Engineers spend time searching for equipment, cabling, managing firmware, and configuring resources. With no reliable way to share or reserve devices, engineers hoard equipment, which lowers utilization and drives up CapEx. Conflicts over resources take time to resolve and can delay high-priority customer cases. Management lacks visibility into availability, usage patterns, and true utilization, so capacity planning is guesswork. As products grow more complex, regression testing becomes more important, and the lack of automation slows delivery. Teams need a searchable inventory across sites, policy-based reservation and conflict resolution, automated setup and teardown, remote access, and usage reporting.

Global Network Lab Productivity Solution

Keysight Velocity federates distributed labs into a single automated platform available 24/7. Device abstraction lets engineers request resources by attribute, such as a router with two 100G ports, and Velocity selects the best device based on availability and location. Automated configuration management loads custom configurations and firmware at reservation start, and administrative rollback returns devices to a known-good state when reservations end. Conflict resolution redirects resources from lower-priority tasks to critical customer cases. For required manual cabling, Velocity issues work orders and marks the topology ready when complete. Dashboards track device utilization, user activity, and test results. A network security leader converged five labs in under six months, reduced OpEx by $5.2 million and CapEx by $2.8 million over 24 months, and saved 349 engineering hours per week.

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