If there’s one thing I’ve learned leading product teams, it’s that you can’t stay competitive by standing still. Over the last few years, the organizations that embraced hybrid, multi-cloud environments early have raced ahead—while others are still trying to catch up.
Now, with the rise of AI, that gap is about to widen again. The companies that modernize their networks for agility and intelligence will move faster, operate smarter and innovate at scale. But too many businesses are still being held back by an old, familiar bottleneck: critical network services that can’t keep up with business evolution.
The Hidden Barrier to AI and Cloud Agility
More than 90 percent of organizations now rely on multiple cloud providers.1 That’s great for flexibility—but it also makes the network infinitely more complex to manage, secure and scale, leading to fragmented, inefficient operations and costly service disruptions. Network configuration errors remain the number one source of outages,2 which can cost enterprises up to $1.4 million per hour.3 Lack of enterprise-wide visibility into IP address usage and DNS records continues to impede automation efforts and increase risk. NetOps and CloudOps teams still operate in silos—often relying on help desk tickets to communicate—delaying deployments. All these issues make the network less reliable, performant and secure—which in turn makes strategic AI and cloud initiatives slower, riskier and more expensive.
While these issues affect businesses differently, they share a common cause: a reliance on outdated approaches to the foundational DNS, DHCP and IP address management (DDI) services that keep the digital business running. In fact, companies without enterprise-grade DDI have 44 percent more outages and take 38 percent longer to recover.4 That’s time and money no organization can afford to waste—especially as AI workloads drive new levels of demand and complexity.
Why We Built Infoblox Universal DDI™
When we introduced the Infoblox Universal DDI™ Product Suite last year, our goal was simple but ambitious: to turn network services from an operational bottleneck into a strategic accelerator.
We built the industry’s first comprehensive software-as-a service (SaaS) platform for DNS, DHCP and IP address management (IPAM)—giving enterprises unified visibility and control across hybrid, multi-cloud environments. And the response has been remarkable. In just 12 months, more than 200 customers worldwide—from Fortune 500 leaders in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and retail to fast-growing innovators—have adopted Universal DDI to modernize their networks.
Even more exciting is how quickly they’re seeing results. A major U.S. retailer switched to Infoblox cloud-based DNS and DHCP. They’ve seen a 30 percent efficiency improvement in deploying and scaling new appliances, and they now bring up new stores in minutes. One of the world’s fastest-growing AI innovators modernized DDI for its corporate network and now plans to extend it into AI data centers.
According to Alex Barrere, Senior 2 Core Network Engineer with Nordstrom, “Infoblox Universal DDI has transformed how we manage DNS. Whether it’s supporting 6,000 internal DNS queries per second or standing up new stores with cloud-managed DHCP, Infoblox is helping us modernize our infrastructure and prepare for the future.” These aren’t just architecture upgrades, they’re operational transformations. NetOps, CloudOps and SecOps teams are working together more fluidly, driving automation, reducing outages and accelerating time to market.
Expanding Choice and Control with New Integrations
One of our core design principles for Universal DDI has always been choice—meeting customers where they are. Today, we’re expanding that commitment with new integrations with Microsoft and Google that make it easier for customers to manage and automate critical network services across hybrid, multi-cloud environments. With Universal DDI embedded directly into the platforms they already use, customers can modernize even faster.
- Microsoft DNS/DHCP Management: Universal DDI can now manage Microsoft DNS and DHCP configurations on Windows Servers, alongside other internal, external and cloud DNS services, with the same API and UI. Businesses can modernize how they manage critical network services right away, without overhauling infrastructure, and move toward a more agile, resilient and scalable Universal DDI architecture for DNS and DHCP services over time, at their own pace.
- Google Internal Range Integration: Customers can now manage Google Cloud IP addresses directly from the Infoblox Portal. NetOps can apply consistent IP policies across their hybrid, multi-cloud environments, while CloudOps can deploy faster, with less risk.
These integrations give customers the freedom to modernize at their own pace, working with the platforms and partners they already trust.
Extending Visibility and Security to External DNS
Hybrid, multi-cloud complexity doesn’t just affect internal IT. Now, with the Infoblox for External Authoritative DNS portfolio, customers can apply the same industry-leading resiliency and simplicity they have for internal networks to the external DNS services that keep their websites, email and other internet-connected apps online.
- Integration with Akamai and Cloudflare: Universal DDI can already manage DNS across Amazon Route 53, Azure DNS, Google Cloud DNS and Infoblox. Now, this unified DNS management plane extends to two of the leading external DNS providers, Cloudflare and Akamai. Customers can manage DNS for their entire digital estate through a single API and the Infoblox Portal.
- Strong Defenses for External DNS Infrastructure: Customers hosting their own external DNS with NIOS DDI can now use Infoblox DNS Infrastructure Protection (formerly Advanced DNS Protection) to safeguard exposed DNS infrastructure. They can block DNS distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), hijacking, cache poisoning and other attacks while keeping legitimate traffic flowing.
With these capabilities, organizations can establish a robust business continuity and disaster recovery architecture. In the event of a disruption to external DNS services hosted by a cloud or SaaS provider like Cloudflare or Akamai, the service can seamlessly fail over to Infoblox.
Building an AI-Ready Network Foundation
Finally, we’re helping customers ensure they have the foundational capabilities required for AI transformation. As a longtime leader and pioneer in AI and machine learning (ML), Infoblox built Universal DDI from the ground up to power the data-driven innovations of the future. Infoblox Universal Asset Insights™, for example, provides AI-powered analysis of hybrid, multi-cloud networks to surface IP conflicts, dangling DNS records and other hidden risks. Infoblox Threat Defense™, our Protective DNS solution, uses AI to inspect customer traffic to detect and stop domain generation algorithms (DGAs), zero-day DNS attacks, lookalike domains and other threats before they impact the business.
Together, these innovations give businesses powerful tools to succeed in the AI era. They simplify hybrid, multi-cloud network operations, reduce errors and outages, and break down operational silos for pervasive visibility—providing the reliable, high-performance network foundation AI workloads demand.
Modernize at Your Own Pace—and Start Seeing Results
With all the challenges of the status quo—siloed operations, fragmented visibility, stalled automation and frequent delays and service disruptions—enterprises were already challenged to meet the accelerating pace of cloud transformation. Now, as we enter the age of AI, things will only get faster—much faster. But no matter how forward-looking, organizations can only move as fast as the slowest part of the business. For too long, that has been the network, straining under the demands of all those next-generation applications and clouds and AI workloads.
Most IT leaders know they need to modernize the foundational DDI services that keep their networks running but when they think about “modernization,” they envision long, disruptive overhauls and stalled innovation. With Universal DDI, you can start small, plug into a single API and see value almost overnight—with the network and partners you have right now. Whether launching new AI initiatives, unifying global branch operations or just building a more reliable foundation for existing applications, Infoblox can help you get there faster.
Because in the age of AI, speed is everything—and the network should never be the thing that slows you down.
Footnotes
- ESG Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Management Maturity Survey & Report, Infoblox, 2024.
- Uptime Institute’s 2022 Outage Analysis Finds Downtime Costs and Consequences Worsening as Industry Efforts to Curb Outage Frequency Fall Short, Uptime Institute, Business Wire, June 8, 2022.
- The rising costs of downtime, Blau, Adam, BigPanda, April 25, 2024.
- 9 Pitfalls of Not Using Enterprise-Grade DDI, ESG Report, Infoblox.
