The Age of Network Automation: Takeaways from our New York User Group

What do you get when you combine DNS experts from some of North America’s leading brands? A collection of insights that serve as a compass for the direction of network management and cyber security. We hold our customers in very high esteem, and they know better than anyone what the future holds. After all, they’re the ones working with their networks every day.

On January 18, we held the latest BlueCat user group in Manhattan, and as we sat down with a handful of BlueCat customers, there were a number of interesting topics and trends that arose with a single connecting thread: network automation. IT automation initiatives are becoming more and more popular, as they shift from being simple options to being an absolute necessity.

Network automation can transform organizations. It enables self-service, provides rapid delivery of virtualization, cloud compute and other key initiatives in minutes instead of days. It reduces service-level agreements and empowers IT organizations to move away from manual processes and ticket management, giving organizations more time to see how they can move the business forward. 

The advantage of APIs

Many companies suffer from technical debt, that is to say, they suffer from the pains caused by choosing the easier solution instead of the better solution. What seemed faster then has ultimately cost them more down the line. Participants mentioned the importance and benefits of APIs in cleaning up their networks and rolling the clock back on this technical debt. BlueCat APIs helped these organizations to better deal with defunct domains and orphaned DNS and DHCP data. It also allowed them to build better automated provisioning for their servers, enabling infrastructure to go live in minutes.

From the desk of your CISO

We all report to somebody, and our customers’ respective CIOs and CISOs were truly prioritizing automation. In fact, there is a corporate mandate to “automate everything”. There was also lots of talk about IP provisioning as a critical piece in much of what they are automating. With the constant addition of new IoT devices, the network needs to be able to facilitate quick and secure connections to the network. To take network automation a step further, there was also talk of creating a process and self-service portal that would give more people permissions to onboard servers. This would allow for controlled access that doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of the DNS administrators.

There was also a serious investment in DNS from some organizations. This is what truly allowed them (and will continue to allow them) to automate in order to solve complex business problems. In fact, when one customer asked another how much time automating saved them, they responded that “it’s not about saving time, it’s about making something possible”.

If you’re running a race, of course, speed is important. But network automation is not a race – it’s a journey. If you don’t know what direction you’re running or where you’re going, speed becomes irrelevant. DNS plays a fundamental role in the age of automation. A centrally managed, scalable, resilient network lets you see and control exactly what’s going on across your network. Only then can you to tap into that management layer, automate processes, and focus on the tasks that matter.