Global Pharmaceutical Firm

The Customer

This global research-based biopharmaceutical company discovers, develops, and commercializes innovative medicines in areas of unmet medical need. We spoke with a senior technology engineer responsible for the LAN at the main campus, all of the remote site LANs, and all the WAN connectivity linking the company’s sites in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Among other activities, his team of infrastructure system managers assigns and manages IP addresses for the entire global network.

The Challenge

The engineer explained that his team had been performing IP address management (IPAM) using spreadsheets, which didn’t scale well as the company grew. Supporting an ever-growing and fluctuating range of IP addresses became increasingly difficult, particularly as employees around the globe added voice over IP (VoIP) phones, laptops, and their own mobile devices to the network.

For example, when an IT system manager logged into a spreadsheet, it became locked, and other managers had to wait to use it, causing backlogs and delays. Additionally, IP addresses might be reserved or assigned but not yet entered into the spreadsheet, making it difficult to identify the device, its purpose, the IT owners, and the business users.

Another challenge emerged after the company moved to a virtualized environment. Using a spreadsheet to manually assign and document IP addresses for new servers was fine when it took a week to build and deploy a physical machine. But with the company deploying five or six new virtual servers each day, the organization needed a much quicker way to manage the addresses.

The engineer was quick to point out that his entire infrastructure was managed by only a few individuals. This meant that a new IPAM solution had to make address management simpler and more efficient for the system managers.

The team had three key requirements for the IPAM solution:

• As a lean IT organization, they wanted to run IPAM on a dedicated box that was completely supported so that maintenance of the solution would not fall on the small internal team.
• A web-based solution was essential for streamlining the IP management process.
• The company also needed a solution that could keep up with growth and meet additional network management needs in the future.

Since Infoblox IPAM technology is available on both purpose-built physical appliances and a variety of virtual platforms, it was the logical choice to meet the company’s need for a combined hardware and software solution. The senior technology engineer also liked the range of network services—including Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Domain Name System (DNS), Network Time Protocol (NTP), and Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)—that the Infoblox appliance provides in the same box, capabilities his team can use moving forward.

The Infoblox Solution

The company implemented an Infoblox DDI appliance at the main campus using Infoblox Grid™ technology to set it up as a Grid Master so that when the company eventually employs additional Infoblox appliances at its remote sites, they can easily be added to the network and centrally controlled from the headquarters site.

The Results

The engineer says that Infoblox IPAM technology simplifies IP address management and delivers significant time savings. His team can now manage IP addresses more easily worldwide and can assign them more quickly for rapid deployment of virtual servers. The IT team has enhanced its ability to support business growth—without increasing headcount. And DHCP, DNS, NTP, and TFTP services are ready to be activated as needed.

The new solution will also help speed the documentation process for Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) qualification. As a biotech manufacturer, the company must meet GMP requirements for medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing and testing, some of which directly affect network management.

According to the engineer, manageability is now on par with the needs of a growing global company. Infoblox IPAM enables his administrators to enforce prerequisites for obtaining each IP address, including all of the ownership information. As this biotech company continues its mission of advancing therapeutics and improving lives, its product portfolio and workforce will continue to grow along with its global IT needs. With the Infoblox appliance in place, the engineer observed, the network staff is well prepared for the future.