Innovation is the key to staying ahead in today’s fast-paced business world. Companies that leverage a hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructure can access the newest technologies and be more agile while continuing to use their on-prem investments. A recent survey of 1,000 IT leaders worldwide reveals that 91%* of organizations use two or more public cloud providers in an effort to lower costs, realize faster innovation, and achieve greater scalability.
The reality, though, is that organizations are not yet able to tap into the full potential of their hybrid, multi-cloud approach because they are struggling to manage critical network services like DNS, DHCP, and IP address management (DDI).
As Infoblox’s Chief Product Officer, I’ve talked to many customers who have found themselves in that dilemma. I’ll summarize the challenges as these five common scenarios:
- Human Mistakes Causing Outages. With the adoption of hybrid multi-cloud environments, organizations often use 4-5 different DNS systems such as Amazon Route 53, Azure DNS, Google Cloud DNS, Microsoft and Infoblox. This happens because cloud teams prefer to use the native DNS services provided by their respective cloud platforms. Managing these multiple DNS systems is like walking a tightrope. One misstep can lead to significant outages, disrupting services and costing businesses time and money. The risk of human error increases exponentially with the number of systems in play, making it a critical issue for IT teams.
- Increased Cost of Management and Automation. Because they are dealing with 4-5 different DNS systems, the costs can quickly spiral out of control. Each system has its own set of UIs, APIs and automation tools, leading to higher expenses and a more complex management landscape. This fragmentation drains financial resources and demands more from your IT staff.
- Suboptimal Usage of Precious IP Blocks: The scarcity of IP space is a critical issue for most enterprises. A primary cause is the lack of visibility into how IP addresses are being used, especially in cloud environments. CloudOps teams frequently request additional subnets from NetOps teams, but NetOps has no visibility into cloud resources, making it impossible to accurately assess current usage. In public cloud environments, IP address utilization can be as low as 10%, dropping even further to 0.1% in Kubernetes environments. This inefficiency can halt progress, preventing the launch of new applications and the establishment of new branch offices. Consequently, IP address scarcity significantly slows down business operations and growth, making effective IP management essential.
- IP Conflicts and Overlaps Causing Application Outages. In public cloud environments, the CloudOps team often manages daily operations with little collaboration with the NetOps team. This lack of visibility and coordination can lead to overlapping or conflicting subnets going unnoticed, resulting in application outages that disrupt business operations. These conflicts are not just a technical headache but can also have significant business implications.
- Stale DNS Records and Zombie Assets. Stale or dangling DNS records are more than clutter—they’re security vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited. CloudOps teams often request DNS records for new applications but forget to request cleanup when apps are decommissioned. Similarly, zombie assets, which are no longer in use but still consuming resources, can inflate costs and complicate management. Addressing these issues is essential for maintaining a secure and efficient network environment.
That’s why, to address those challenges, we’re introducing a new product suite built on Infoblox’s expertise and deep understanding of networking, threat intelligence and DNS management ╌ so everyone can innovate faster, optimize costs, and stay secure.
Our Game Changer: Infoblox Universal DDI™ Product Suite
As introduced in our recent virtual launch event, Infoblox has reinvented critical network services for the hybrid, multi-cloud era. We’re excited to introduce the Infoblox Universal DDI™ Product Suite – groundbreaking solutions that unify critical network services management across hybrid, multi-cloud environments, providing in-depth visibility and insights with infrastructure-free deployment. By equipping NetOps, SecOps and CloudOps teams with powerful tools, we can enhance collaboration, streamline automation, speed up application deployment and dramatically simplify operations.
The Infoblox Universal DDI Product Suite is set to revolutionize how you manage your critical network services with three offerings. And the best part? These products are now generally available for deployment in production environments, ensuring you can immediately leverage their full potential:
- Infoblox Universal DDI Management is the industry’s first, most comprehensive, unified critical network services management solution. It accelerates business operations by streamlining the automation of cross-cloud DDI environments. Policy-driven network and IP address allocation across the entire hybrid, multi-cloud estate enhance efficiency and reliability while preventing network outages. Its SaaS capabilities enable faster releases and reduce maintenance burdens. Plus, it centralizes DNS management, allowing you to easily manage third-party DNS services like Amazon Route 53, Azure DNS and Google Cloud DNS.
- Infoblox Universal Asset Insights™ offers an unrivaled breadth of discovery sources, providing a unified, comprehensive and context-rich view of assets across hybrid, multi-cloud environments. Extending DNS and DHCP to IP address management (IPAM) pioneers discovery, analytics and remediation across your entire digital estate. Continuous updates to the IPAM inventory eliminate the need for outdated manual tracking methods, reducing errors and delays. It also identifies under or overutilized subnets, zombie assets and dangling DNS records, significantly cutting operational expenses and security risks.
- NIOS-X as a Service is purpose-built to extend critical network services as close to users and workloads as possible without requiring any infrastructure deployment. This first-of-its-kind deployment model keeps costs low while offering the operational simplicity CloudOps teams need, alongside the resilience, consistency, visibility and security that NetOps and SecOps require. It modernizes DNS at distributed branches through rapid infrastructure-free deployment and streamlines multi-cloud private DNS by consolidating cloud-native services into one unified solution. It optimizes branch operations with infrastructure-free DNS and DHCP services.
Our early access program has received glowing reviews from enterprise customers in various industries:
- A leading global airline was struggling with high latency and maintenance issues with their US-based DNS/DHCP. After they tested Infoblox NIOS-X as a Service, they saw significant improvements, including reduced latency, scalable services and availability through cloud-native redundancy.
- Similarly, a major retail chain was facing operational inefficiencies and outage risks in their hybrid multi-cloud setup. With Infoblox Universal DDI, they unified and centralized DDI management, and benefited from the advanced DNS tools, federated IPAM and a unified API for both on-prem and cloud environments.
- Finally, a global marketing communications leader dealing with cloud visibility issues due to mergers and acquisitions praised Universal Asset Insights for its ability to quickly pull extensive data from public cloud accounts in a multi-cloud setup, describing the experience as “really amazing stuff.” It’s fantastic to see how our solutions are making a real difference!
Navigating Multi-Cloud with Confidence
As organizations embrace the complexities of hybrid, multi-cloud environments, Infoblox stands at the forefront, offering innovative solutions that directly address and solve the multi-cloud challenges organizations face. With the introduction of Infoblox Universal DDI Management, Infoblox Universal Asset Insights and NIOS-X as a Service, we are transforming operational hurdles into efficiency, security and growth opportunities. These groundbreaking services empower you to navigate the multi-cloud maze confidently, ensuring seamless operations and robust protection in an ever-evolving digital landscape. Stay tuned for additional blogs where we will dive deeper into the specific capabilities of these solutions and how they can revolutionize your IT infrastructure.
Join us in overcoming multi-cloud challenges and unlocking the full potential of your IT infrastructure. Start your journey here!
*Source: ESG Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Management Maturity Survey and Report, April 2024
