IP address management (IPAM) provides the ability to effectively manage, control, monitor, and assign the IP address space within a company. An IPAM solution reduces operations costs and improves network uptime by minimizing administrative effort and network downtime. To provide effective IP address management, it is essential to control the two key services within a company that provide the naming and delivery of IP addresses - which are DNS and DHCP - as well as to supply the feature sets necessary to generate and present reports detailing IP address information and usage.
Nearly all companies today, from the Fortune 500 to small and medium enterprises, rely on TCP/IP networking for core business services. At a minimum, their internal e-mail, web, network printing, and storage infrastructure depends on the network. In most cases, the network also supports critical business applications, such as e-commerce, enterprise resource planning, customer management, and sales force automation.
Increasingly, networked applications also link companies with their customers, suppliers, and partners. The network has become such an essential corporate resource that an outage can have devastating effects, crippling a company's ability to do business. Consequently, companies have invested substantially in network infrastructure, including routers and wide-area connections.
The criticality of TCP/IP networks continues to increase over time. The growth in mobile computing and the introduction of diverse IP-based devices such as IP telephones, cameras, and RFID readers means that soon virtually every business activity from gaining access to a building to making a phone call will be mediated by the IP network. In this light, IP network connectivity becomes as basic as electricity.
As the network takes on the role of a utility, like power and plumbing, the management of IP addresses and the data associated with them such as MAC, location operating system, etc. becomes key. Organizations need tools to help allocate and track address space, from entire ranges to individual IP addresses. They need central control of and visibility into DHCP and DNS configuration, and central monitoring of the status of these services. And these tools need to be an integral part of the network, because change happens much more frequently as contractors and partners come and go, customers become part of the network, and mobile employees expect constant connectivity as they roam the halls, or the globe.
Regulatory compliance adds another dimension to the challenge. To comply with a subpoena, a company might need to produce a log of which computers had a particular IP address over a period of time. Even if not mandated by regulations, these are clearly vital functions necessary for an organization to detect and thwart attempts to misuse the network.
Server Virtualization Research Library
