New CIO Acronyms: DNS, DHCP, IPAM

Cloud computing and virtualization are promising more dynamic systems with unprecedented cost savings; and network industry leaders are promising more dynamic networks capable of keeping up with the increased rate of change (with these systems). In order for the benefits to be delivered as promised IT will need to evolve from silos into multifunctional teams, and vendors will need to concomitantly embrace their partners like never before. This process is already underway.

I recently addressed the three biggest barriers to cloud: security, network capacity and network management. These barriers will likely be addressed via new and cloud-strategic partnerships of various kinds as the silos of legacy IT converge into pre-configured containers blending multiple vendor offerings that can be scaled up and out to maximize flexibility and cost savings.

Assessing the Leaders

VMware (VMW) has been the most active of the virtualization players in addressing the new demands of virtualization security. Whether Microsoft (MSFT) and Citrix (CTXS) continue to rely upon partners (or internal development) or make strategic acquisitions of one or more of the virtualization security startups remains to be seen. Ultimately it will be their ability to address customer security demands that will establish their solutions as a clear path to secure, scalable cloud deployments.

On the network capacity side you have to be impressed with the way that Cisco’s (CSCO) UCS with its new cloud angle is evolving. Network World certainly liked their Catalyst 6500 in a recent review. At this point they seem to be ahead of the network switch pack; although rival Juniper has announced a partnership with IBM and more scalability and density for service providers. Juniper's (JNPR) historic core strength with service providers cannot be underestimated as packs of cloud service providers emerge.

F5 Networks (FFIV) earlier announced their enhanced software for managing dynamic infrastructure (or infrastructure 2.0- a term for a network capable of supporting virtualization and cloud). Their expertise with application delivery gives them a potent point of leverage. Cisco, Juniper and F5 all understand the implications of the coming sea change in IT and are shaping their offerings to build the roadmap for their customers.

DNS, DHCP and IPAM- The Front Line

In between today’s growing, increasingly complex and dynamic networks and the promise of cloud computing are layers of challenges driven at least in part by legacy IT. IT services at the enterprise level have been managed by silos of networking teams, security teams, server teams, operations teams, data center teams, etc. As VMotion is fully enabled, many of those silos will become costly and irrelevant.

While applications and networks and systems are containerized into holistic and replicable offerings, the services that connect and coordinate and deliver them will require unprecedented automation as the silos dissolve and teams begin sharing resources and responsibilities. As enterprises plan this evolution, IPAM (or sometimes IP management) will cross the chasm in the company of integrated DNS, DHCP, network monitoring and other core network services.

Very few CIOs today are familiar with DNS or DHCP; expect that to change as IT begins planning its evolution to infrastructure 2.0. They will become as critical to CIOs as maps are to generals.

Across IT these dedicated, integrated and automated DNS services will be the front lines as systems decouple from hardware and the importance of knowing the location and history of IT assets grows exponentially with increasing rates of change and complexity. Today the spreadsheets and manual configuration requirements are already wearing network teams thin. Mix in accelerating change and complexity and you have obvious operational breaking points.

As networks grow and become more complex their management costs escalate even faster. Core network services, therefore, become critical to availability and security, in the same way that the LAN and WAN became critical components of new IT delivery strategies as enterprises moved employees to personal computers and networked services and then spread computing to branches, teleworkers and partners.

Today the IT strategy list is much larger (including VoIP, wireless/RFID, NAC, Web and eCommerce/supply chain); the services are more critical

Hence it is likely that CIOs and IT VPs will become increasingly aware of the connectivity intelligence challenges inherent with increasingly large and dynamic infrastructure and these new acronyms. If they don’t, many of the consolidation benefits from cloud will be offset by the rising manual network management requirements tied to complexity and velocities of change, not to mention reduced network availability.

If you don’t see this coming check out the netbook revolution that is already unfolding, introducing the prospect of even more endpoint growth and ever more reliance on the network. The enterprise cloud is under construction; and before cloud accelerating endpoint growth appears to be a predictable eventuality for most companies.

The success of the larger IT vendors who want to migrate their customers away from silos and into unified fabrics will depend on their ability to automate these manual tasks. You can read more about this at "Clouds, Networks and Recessions".

As vendors aim for the clouds they’ll need to address more than security and throughput/capacity. They need to embrace automation with solutions which are integrated with DNS, DHCP and IP address management or IPAM. CIOs overseeing these growing and increasingly strategic networks may soon become familiar with acronyms once considered too mundane for executive interest. Those who don’t may end up wondering why things don’t go as smoothly as promised.

Disclosure: Long Cisco and VMware. I am a senior director at Infoblox the leader in DNS appliances and IP address management You can follow my comments in real time here or catch the conversation as it happens here.

Comments

[User 413642:]

Incredible. I have been reading this guy's articles for months as they come up in my Yahoo news feed. I have resisted the urge to respond till now. It must be said - this guy has no idea what he is talking about.

I work in the industry, have been working with VMware virtualization for years and am currently at the center of of all this cloud stuff. I have an insider perspective.

Take for example this quote from the article: "Very few CIOs today are familiar with DNS or DHCP; expect that to change as IT begins planning its evolution to infrastructure 2.0. They will become as critical to CIOs as maps are to generals"

If you are a CIO and you don't understand what DNS you must have received a mail-in degree. Secondly, DNS is just plumbing. The decision to outsource your DNS infrastructure is a simple cost/benefit analysis. DNS is like chicken - it all tastes the same, does the same thing. It's critical to your infrastructure, but it has been around for so long and it is so well known by techies (and CIOs) that it's not really a BIG decision point. Same goes for DHCP and "IPAM".

I could go on and on about other things in this guys articles, but what's the point? He babbles about technology like a 5yr old babbles about toy soldiers. Anyone with half a brain can see through the gobbledygook.

Bottom line - go someplace else for your cloud and infrastructure advice.

May 14 12:09 AM

[Gregory Ness:]

User:

Some CIOs are more comfortable with keeping critical infrastructure in-house, especially if they can use dns appliances, etc to reduce costs and boost availability. If its not a big decision point (infrastructure = plumbing = boredom) then it might be worthwhile taking a new look. That being said you don't need my approval to outsource and dismiss DNS, etc as old news.

Thanks for the comment!

G

May 14 02:00 PM

[john potranca:]

Greg Ness has never offered anything more than a sales pitch for the company he works at and their technology partners whom he hopes will all make him rich...dont believe the hype!

May 15 12:44 PM

[john potranca:]

It always the same with Greg, an annoying sales pitch for his company and technology partners. Its really just a poor attempt at marketing from a wanna be technologist. It is getting very old...

Notice he never mentions his competitors, companies like HP that dominate the data center today with open standards based blade server, storage, software, and switching technology.


On May 14 12:09 AM User 413642 wrote:

> Incredible. I have been reading this guy's articles for months as
> they come up in my Yahoo news feed. I have resisted the urge to respond
> till now. It must be said - this guy has no idea what he is talking
> about.
>
> I work in the industry, have been working with VMware virtualization
> for years and am currently at the center of of all this cloud stuff.
> I have an insider perspective.
>
> Take for example this quote from the article: "Very few CIOs today
> are familiar with DNS or DHCP; expect that to change as IT begins
> planning its evolution to infrastructure 2.0. They will become as
> critical to CIOs as maps are to generals"
>
> If you are a CIO and you don't understand what DNS you must have
> received a mail-in degree. Secondly, DNS is just plumbing. The decision
> to outsource your DNS infrastructure is a simple cost/benefit analysis.
> DNS is like chicken - it all tastes the same, does the same thing.
> It's critical to your infrastructure, but it has been around for
> so long and it is so well known by techies (and CIOs) that it's not
> really a BIG decision point. Same goes for DHCP and "IPAM".
>
> I could go on and on about other things in this guys articles, but
> what's the point? He babbles about technology like a 5yr old babbles
> about toy soldiers. Anyone with half a brain can see through the
> gobbledygook.
>
> Bottom line - go someplace else for your cloud and infrastructure
> advice.

May 15 12:57 PM

[Gregory Ness:]

John and anon:

About 8 years ago I was at VoiceCon with an IT director who presented a business case for enterprise VoIP deployment across about a dozen offices (I was with ShoreTel at the time). The moderator blasted the preso by saying that VoIP was a toy that would never be seriously deployed within the enterprise. He knew because he had more than a decade of experience managing legacy PBXs (he was in the mix and he knew better).

The tech world is particularly interesting because it is filled with a broad spectrum of personalities with an equally broad range of outlooks; and many of the champions of new technologies work for the companies enabling change. They vote with their feet by choosing a company, technology, team etc. They share their opinions with those who will listen.

I realize that there are plenty of techies who think the network is a dumb bus, a mere pipe. Some may even think IT isn't strategic anymore ala Mick Carr. Some will outsource their IT (they see it as a simple business case decision), others will embrace IT and transform it, carefully evaluating new technologies on a case by case basis.

Rather than lob generalizations that I only speak well of partners (F5 for example is not an Infoblox partner nor VMware, Citrix or Juniper), or practice the fine art of "gobbledygook" why not argue with the theme of my posts: that the network is strategic and will be more strategic as enterprises move to virtualization and cloud; and that network intelligence, automation and management will become more important as networks get more complex and endpoints and systems more mobile?

This came up during a panel I was on yesterday at Interop's Enterprise Cloud Summit. We talked about the downside risks of cloud (security, compliance, unplanned downtime, lock-in, etc) and many of these issues are relevant to the networking industry and how networks adapt to cloud architectures. This point will likely be made Thursday at the FIRE conference by VMware's (not a partner) Director of Operations.

BTW- I have nothing against HP; I think they're an excellent company now facing a new and more dynamic competitive landscape. I just don't see them as particularly visionary today when it comes to cloud computing, especially relative to Cisco (yes, a partner), F5 (not a partner) or Juniper (not a partner). I think Citrix (not a partner) is getting more interesting regarding the cloud.

But these are just my opinions. You can take them or leave them.

Thanks for your comments
Greg

May 19 09:03 PM