BlueCat CTO on Packet Pushers: Moving beyond mere DDI

BlueCat CTO Andrew Wertkin appeared on the June 4 episode of Packet Pushers, a “deeply technical and unabashedly nerdy” podcast about networking and infrastructure engineering.  There’s some great material in here about how DNS can play a role in creating the fully integrated, orchestrated, flexible networks we all want.

DDI = table stakes

It’s tempting to think of DNS, DHCP, and IPAM as mere network infrastructure – something to configure and forget about.  According to Wertkin, “if it’s just DDI, it’s table stakes.  We believe that BlueCat has to take way more ownership of ensuring that customers are meeting their business needs because we know so much about how to deploy the [DNS] protocol.  That’s the shift.”  BlueCat’s Adaptive DNS platform goes beyond mere DDI, taking the grunt work out of infrastructure management so networking teams can focus on the strategic initiatives that really matter.

BlueCat integrations with Cisco ACI and DNA Center

This is one of the reasons we’re so excited about the release of integrations with Cisco ACI and Cisco DNA Center.  Here’s Wertkin again:  “BlueCat is the source of truth for the allocation of networks.  Integration with BlueCat to ensure that the appropriate networks are being provisioned for ACI and DNA is a significant use case.  This allows customers to express intent at a higher level, and we worry about compiling that into the appropriate configuration.”

BlueCat will be demonstrating these new integrations at Cisco Live San Diego.  Drop by booth 2015 to see us, and pop in on Andrew Wertkin’s presentation on Tuesday at 1:45PM to hear him talk about the role of DNS in today’s complex network landscape.

DNS as a security tool

Security isn’t always something people associate with DNS, but it really should be.  DNS data is an amazing source of intelligence for both security and networking teams.  As Wertkin says, “when you look at DNS data en masse, when you look at all the data streaming off a device, it becomes pretty clear right away that you can profile what that thing is, what it does, is it user driven is it operating system driven.  I can look at any DNS stream and guess what the user’s function is.  It’s a very rich set of data.  Context is crazy important.”  BlueCat provides all of this contextual information as part of its Intelligent Security platform, capturing data right at the device level.

Listen to the full Packet Pushers podcast.