IP address management or IPAM refers to the planning, managing and tracking of IP addresses used in a network. IPAM has historically been well deployed in the biggest of the big, but more of a nice-to-have for the majority of organizations. However, there are a number of trends coming that should cause organizations to take another look at IP address management and consider it part of their overall network management strategy.
First--a bit of history. How did companies manage IP addresses before? The answer is the same way I did when I was in corporate IT--Excel, home made Access data bases, Word documents and post it notes stuck to devices. While the thought sounds crazy, I know many, many network managers that have huge multi sheet spreadsheets as their IP address management tool.
The obvious problem with this is that everything is manual. Move a device, manually change the spreadsheet. An employee quits, manually update the spreadsheet. Deploy a new printer, manually update the spreadsheet. This eventually becomes a big mess that’s very difficult to deal with. I remember several times trying to figure out what a certain device was, where it was, etc. I could ping it, but couldn't find it.
Another big problem was that, without a proper IPAM tool, it is very difficult to understand what addresses have been handed out. It was common to hand out an address for a fixed device, such as new printer, and then the spreadsheet not get updated. Then when the device is off, the address gets used for something else, the printer gets turned on and an IP address conflict occurs. I can provide many other examples, but the main point is than an IPAM tool helps automate much of what I and so many other network managers do manually.
So, what's changed that drives the need for IPAM? I see three big changes driving the need for IPAM.
The first trend is that consumerization of IT drives up the number of IP enabled devices per user. In "the old days," most users only had 1-2 devices per person--a workstation and maybe a printer if the user was high-enough level to warrant one. Today it's possible for a worker to have a laptop, iPad, IP desk phone, WiFi enabled cell phone, IP enabled video camera and other devices. This drives the number of IP addresses from 1 or 2 per user-to 4 or more. This could easily double the amount of addresses required on a per individual basis. Also, few of these devices are static, meaning the allocation and management of IP addresses will need to be dynamic and automated. In my mind, this is the single, biggest change IT will need to deal with over the next few years--how to managed the influx of consumer technology into the work place.
The second trend is in the data center, and that's data center evolution due to virtualization. Historically, the devices in the data center--servers, storage, etc--were fixed devices. In fact, the data center has been one of the most stable areas for end points as post applications are built in silos and then don’t change much over the years.
However, all that is now thrown out the window with the coming of age of virtualization. Companies that adopt virtualization tend to have more total servers (physical + virtual) than they used to have physical servers, increasing the overall number of endpoints. Additionally, many developers and server operations people have the ability to create a virtual machine "on the fly" and then take it down when not used. Lastly, advances in virtualization technology mean that the servers can be put in motion and moved around or across data centers. This means there is a now a high degree of unpredictability to an environment that was among the most predictable in the past.
The last trend is the speed at which IT now has to operate. IT used to have much longer maintenance windows and was able to methodically make changes requested by lines of business. Today, the speed at which these changes happen can often dictate the success or failure of the initiative, so today's IT needs a different set of tools than yesterday's IT.
What this means for IP address management is that the old manual way of allocating, managing and troubleshooting IP problems will not do. What’s needed is an automated system that can simplify the end to end lifecycle of address management. So, for organizations that have looked at it in the past and decided it wasn't for you, it's time to take another look at IPAM before these bigger trends hit your organizations. If buyers aren’t sure where to start, Infoblox is the market leader in this space but there are other tools such as the Vital tool that’s now owned by ALU, and Bluecat Networks.
