Forward launches Predict to test network changes safely

Forward has launched Forward Predict, a product that tests proposed network changes against a digital twin of a live production network.

The launch comes as the company, previously known as Forward Networks, sharpens its focus on autonomous networking and reducing the risks tied to network changes before deployment.

The new offering is designed to let organisations assess the likely effect of a change before it reaches a live environment. It uses the company's existing network digital twin model, described as a full representation of network behaviour across devices, vendors and cloud environments.

Forward argues that network teams still often use live production systems as the final test bed for changes, despite relying on lab environments, change procedures and approvals beforehand. That can leave room for service disruption, rollback costs, compliance issues and delays to wider technology projects when a change does not behave as intended.

Digital twin

At the centre of the new product is a model that reproduces the state of the production network from the network layer to the application layer, according to Forward. Proposed changes can be run through that model to show how traffic, policies and dependencies would behave before engineers make any adjustment in the live environment.

Forward says this allows teams to validate future network states as well as current ones. In beta deployments with selected customers, the product has been used to speed the path from design to deployment, validate changes before release and reduce risk earlier in the process.

"We built Forward on the conviction that math could do what manual processes never could," said Nikhil Handigol, Chief AI Officer and Co-Founder, Forward.

"Network changes have always carried unnecessary risk, because engineers lacked definitive knowledge of the network behavior. Forward Predict changes the paradigm by verifying every change before it happens, which means engineering teams stop operating on instinct and start operating on certainty. This level of certainty is the essential prerequisite for autonomous networking, enabling AI agents to propose, verify, and deploy at machine speed without human intervention," said Handigol.

One of the early users is financial services company IG Group. Forward says the product is already in beta use there as part of a limited customer rollout.

"Once you see the platform and you understand how it works, trusting it is easy," said Steve Bamford, Senior Network Engineer, IG Group.

"I have deliberately tested scenarios that, if pushed live, would have isolated parts of the network and taken the network down. Predict catches them. Being able to test changes across our entire production network before they go live is a game-changer, and it accelerates our autonomous networking journey," said Bamford.

Wider push

The launch also marks a rebrand. The business now trades as Forward rather than Forward Networks. The change reflects a broader ambition around autonomous networking, while its core technology and leadership remain the same.

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder David Erickson linked the new product to the company's longer-term strategy, saying the business had spent more than a decade building towards a system that could support automated network operations with a higher level of assurance.

"When we founded Forward more than a decade ago, we set our sights on the future of autonomous networking," said David Erickson, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Forward.

"Everything we have built since, including the world's first network digital twin, was working backwards from that goal. An incredible team, advances in compute, and 12 years of deep collaboration with the world's largest and most complex networks have made this moment possible. Forward Predict is the next critical step on that journey, and we built it for every organization that cares about their network," said Erickson.

Industry analysts have long pointed to trust as a barrier to greater automation in network management, especially in large and complex estates where a single faulty change can have wide operational consequences. Forward is positioning the new product as a way to give IT teams, and eventually software agents, a method to check changes in a controlled model before execution.

"Autonomous networking has long been the goal, but the missing piece has always been trust," said Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst, ZK Research.

"Forward Predict changes that by providing a mathematically accurate environment where IT leaders can validate both human and AI-driven changes before they touch production. This creates the safety net required to finally move at machine speed without the fear of manual errors or outages," said Kerravala.

Forward counts large enterprises and public sector bodies among its customers, including Goldman Sachs, PayPal, S&P Global, IBM and Dell. Its platform is used across multi-vendor networks and major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and IBM, according to the company.