Nautomation Prime Foundation
Free network automation education, and free or low-cost engineering support for UK charities
The Nautomation Prime Foundation¶
The Nautomation Prime Foundation is the free, publicly accessible side of Nautomation Prime. It exists for two reasons: to teach Cisco network automation to anyone who wants to learn it, at no cost, and to put Christopher Davies' Cisco and general networking engineering skills — advice and improvements on existing infrastructure as well as Python-based automation — to work for registered UK charities and Community Interest Companies who could not otherwise afford them.
- 100% free education, no account or paywall
- CC-BY 4.0 licensed learning content
- Free and low-cost delivery for verified UK charities and CICs
Legal status note: Nautomation Prime is not yet trading, and the charity-services offer below is not yet open. The Nautomation Prime Foundation is not a registered charity or Community Interest Company. It is an initiative operated directly by Christopher Davies, with the stated intention of registering it as a charity or CIC as it grows. It does not solicit public donations for itself. Companies House has confirmed that the word "Foundation" does not require its approval when used, as here, in a sole trader's business name; the full position is on the Foundation Legal Status & Governance page. Nothing on this site should be read as a claim of registered charitable status.
Why the Foundation exists¶
Christopher built Nautomation Prime on the belief that automation should never be a black box. The Foundation extends that belief beyond paying clients:
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Education should not be gatekept¶
Understanding Cisco network automation shouldn't depend on being able to afford a course or a consultant. Every tutorial and deep dive here is free, indefinitely, to anyone.
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Charities carry real operational risk on thin budgets¶
Small and medium UK charities often run the same critical Cisco infrastructure as commercial organisations, with none of the budget for specialist help when something needs auditing, backing up, or automating safely.
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Skills should compound in the community, not just in one business¶
Publishing tutorials and deep dives under a permissive licence means teachers, bloggers, and other engineers can build on this content rather than starting from zero.
Between the Lines
Simone Weil thought attention was not a technique but a moral act — “the rarest and purest form of generosity”, as she put it in a letter. She meant the kind you give another person. She also meant the kind a difficult thing demands before it will open.
That is the honest limit of everything published here. Free tutorials remove the cost of learning; they cannot remove the requirement to sit with something long enough to understand it, and that part was always going to be the valuable part. Attention is the one resource nobody can lend you more of.
What the Foundation offers¶
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Learn, free, forever¶
Structured tutorials from beginner to expert, plus the Learning Hub route map that tells you where to start for your current skill level.
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Enterprise standards, published in full¶
The operating standards we assess against, free and complete: Production-Grade Network Automation Principles, Governed AI for Network Operations, and line-by-line Deep Dives of real automation code.
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Controls you can cite¶
The reference-grade half: a coded control catalogue, the assessment method that goes with it, the Python engineering bar, and a vendor-neutral reference architecture.
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Free & low-cost help for charities¶
Cisco and general networking engineering, infrastructure advice, and Python-based automation offered directly to registered UK charities and CICs, scoped and delivered under a clear, capped-liability agreement.
How the Foundation relates to Nautomation Prime¶
Nautomation Prime is Christopher Davies' trading name for his Cisco automation engineering and consulting work. The Foundation is not a separate legal entity today; it is the free, community-facing part of that same business, run under the same sole-trader accountability, insurance considerations, and legal obligations described in the site's Terms of Use and Disclaimer.
This is a deliberately different thing from the Giving With Integrity policy, which governs how a percentage of Nautomation Prime's commercial revenue will be donated to independently vetted, already-registered external charities as the business grows. The Foundation, by contrast, is Nautomation Prime directly delivering free education and free or low-cost engineering time — it does not collect or distribute money on behalf of other charities.
Licensing at a glance¶
All Foundation tutorials, deep dives, and guides are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) — you can copy, adapt, and reuse them, including commercially, provided you credit Nautomation Prime. Illustrative code snippets inside that content are licensed under Apache License 2.0. Full detail, including what remains proprietary (the PRIME Framework and Philosophy, and premium packaged tools sold through the Script Library), is on the Licensing page.
Ready to get started?¶
Whether you want to learn network automation for free or you run a UK charity that needs Cisco help you can't currently afford, start here.