The Costs and Impacts of DNS and IP Address Management (IPAM) for the Enterprise and SMB

October 2008
Core Network Services
Survey: The Costs and
Impacts of DNS and IP
Address Management
(IPAM) for the Enterprise
and SMB
Research conducted by:
Sponsored by:Core Network Services Survey: The Costs and Impacts of DNS and IP Address Management (IPAM) for the Enterprise and SMB
Contents
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Executive summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Number of IP devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Applications for IP address management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Cost of managing IP addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Time elapsed between CERT announcement and patching recursive DNS server. . . . . . . . . . 8
Challenges to DNS management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Number of helpdesk calls per user for IP- and DNS-related issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Number of internal/external DNS servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Applications used for internal DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Applications used for external DNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Profile of respondents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Research conducted by: Sponsored by: October 2008 | Page 2 of 16"
Core Network Services Survey: The Costs and Impacts of DNS and IP Address Management (IPAM) for the Enterprise and SMB
Core Network Services Survey: The Costs and
Impacts of DNS and IP Address Management
(IPAM) for the Enterprise and SMB
OverviewIn August 2008, Computerworld invited IT and business leaders to participate in a core network servicessurvey, that included specific questions about their DNS infrastructures and the costs of IP addressmanagement. The survey was fielded via targeted broadcasts to Computerworld customers, as well asthrough an invitation on Computerworld.com. The survey was commissioned by Infoblox, but the data wasgathered and tabulated independently by Computerworld Research. The following report represents top-lineresults of that survey.
Executive summary
Diseconomies of scaleUndoubtedly, enterprise organizations have more challenges in managing their core network servicesgiven their size. Along with more internal/external DNS servers and a larger number of IP devices,enterprise organizations also have higher costs associated with managing IP addresses. Additionally,nearly two-thirds of enterprise organizations are currently using basic software tools like spreadsheets tomanage IP addresses, despite the increasing demands and costs associated with the management ofcore network services.While these factors combined pose more challenges to enterprise organizations in the area of DNSmanagement, SMB organizations are also using valuable time and resources on manual IP addressmanagement and need to find alternatives to legacy IP address management.
Complexity of enterprise networksNot surprisingly, enterprise organizations have more IP devices, and therefore more complex enterprisenetworks. While the average number of IP devices across all organizations surveyed was 9,716, theaverage number among enterprise organizations was 23,069, and the average among SMB organizationswas 966.Two-thirds of respondents (66%) are currently using basic software tools like spreadsheets for IPaddress management. Other applications used for IP address management include IPAM software (19%)and IPAM appliances (10%). While respondents in enterprise organizations are significan... [download for more]