You Can’t Manage What You Can’t See: Infoblox Network Insight Delivers New Levels of Visibility and Productivity

Infoblox Inc. (NYSE:BLOX), the network control company, today announced enhancements to Infoblox Network Insight, a solution that brings previously disparate real-time network infrastructure data into a single authoritative database, to help make enterprise networks easier to manage and more secure.

Until now, network data has existed in multiple silos managed by various teams. One silo tracks network devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers, often on outdated spreadsheets. Another silo has information on connected endpoint devices such as PCs, smart phones, and tablets. Yet another silo tracks configuration of the Domain Name System (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and IP address allocations and history. Blocked by these silos, networking teams do not have a shared, big-picture view into what is happening across the network and cannot effectively respond to network issues in real time. Network management tasks therefore take longer and require error-prone manual processes—which increase cost, complexity, and risk.

Infoblox Network Insight (www.infoblox.com/networkinsight), introduced in January 2014, brings these silos together in a single authoritative IP address management (IPAM) database. This database empowers network engineers to automatically gather a broad range of information, analyze it, and in the latest version, take action in real time through a single point of control. Infoblox Network Insight delivers an unprecedented range of capabilities, including:

• Automated discovery. Comprehensive, automated discovery of all layer-2 and layer-3 network devices as well as endpoint devices and switch ports, gives network teams an always-up-to-date view of what is on the network.
• Switch-port control. New in this version, administrators can control individual switch ports and manage their global switch-port inventory, improving productivity, lowering risk, increasing resource utilization, and reducing the constant headaches and conflicts associated with port management—all from one user interface.
• A unified, authoritative source of network data. Diverse teams managing different network functions can now share one source of accurate, up-to-date network information. Everything from IP address history to network and endpoint device information to protocol-related data such as DNS and DHCP information is reconciled in one place, giving a comprehensive view of critical network data.
• Enhanced security. Every networking device can be individually identified for rapid isolation of unauthorized or unmanaged units. Rogue devices and unmanaged IP addresses can be seen in one place, in real time. Switch ports can be maintained in an inactive mode and turned on only when a valid device is provisioned, preventing unauthorized use of inactive ports.
• Higher network availability. Outages caused by configuration errors when readjusting network devices or placing new equipment on the network can be significantly reduced. Conflict detection also helps maintain data that represents the actual state of the network.
• Easier expansion. When combining enterprise networks because of mergers or acquisitions, down time due to overlapping IP addresses, lost knowledge, or missing network architecture documentation can be avoided or even eliminated.

In short, better data enables better decisions. The enhanced visibility and control delivered by Infoblox Network Insight can bring measurable improvements to the work of IT teams by supporting:

• Faster validation that actual network deployment matches original network designs
• More efficient utilization of network infrastructure
• Fewer staff hours wasted on trivial network administration tasks, allowing the network team to spend more time on higher-level assignments
• Faster time to value for existing Infoblox users, because Network Insight is integrated into the Infoblox graphical user interface.

“Enterprise networks today are full of blind spots that slow down day-to-day work and increase operating expenses,” said Scott Fulton, executive vice president of products at Infoblox. “One network manager told us it is sometimes easier for him to buy a new switch than figure out what ports are available on current switches. Another manager described days of work by multiple teams to fix network outages in multiple branch offices, which turned out to be caused by a well-intentioned employee who had installed a home router without permission. These examples show the benefit of Infoblox Network Insight in overcoming the lack of visibility that prevents IT teams from fully controlling and securing their networks.”