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Overview
In August 2008, Computerworld invited IT and business leaders to participate in a core network services survey, that included specific questions about their DNS infrastructures and the costs of IP address management. The survey was fielded via targeted broadcasts to Computerworld customers, as well as through an invitation on Computerworld.com. The survey was commissioned by Infoblox, but the data was gathered and tabulated independently by Computerworld Research. The following report represents top-line results of that survey.
Executive summary
Diseconomies of scale Undoubtedly, enterprise organizations have more challenges in managing their core network services given 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 to manage IP addresses, despite the increasing demands and costs associated with the management of core network services. While these factors combined pose more challenges to enterprise organizations in the area of DNS management, SMB organizations are also using valuable time and resources on manual IP address management and need to find alternatives to legacy IP address management. Complexity of enterprise networks Not surprisingly, enterprise organizations have more IP devices, and therefore more complex enterprise networks. While the average number of IP devices across all organizations surveyed was 9,716, the average number among enterprise organizations was 23,069, and the average among SMB organizations was 966. Two-thirds of respondents (66%) are currently using basic software tools like spreadsheets for IP address management. Other applications used for IP address management include IPAM software (19%) and IPAM appliances (10%). While respondents in enterprise organizations are significantly more likely than SMB organizations to be using IPAM software (27% vs. 13%) and IPAM appliances (17% vs. 5%), usage of spreadsheets at enterprise organizations is still high, at 63%.
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