Fortune 500 multinational tech company: Upgrading the management of a critical network environment
BlueCat Micetro’s automated approval workflow lets employees request DNS changes and administrators approve or deny them, cutting service desk change tickets from about 500 a month to zero.
Key takeawaysKey takeaways are generated with AI assistance. Because automated summaries can occasionally contain errors or miss important context, always refer to the full blog post for complete information.This case study describes how a global company replaced an inefficient, heavily managed Unix DNS/DHCP environment and a homegrown IPAM with BlueCat Micetro and Microsoft Windows Server, addressing costly administration overhead and slow service delivery. The real-world problem was a dynamic R&D-driven infrastructure with distributed operations and complex SLAs that required centralized manual DDI changes, creating delays and high staffing costs; the technical environment shifted to Micetro-managed DNS/DHCP on Windows and centralized IPAM. The operational impact delivered automated approval workflows, Micetro API-driven real-time data access, redeployment of 80% of DDI staff, elimination of ~500 monthly change tickets, improved uptime, security, and measurable cost savings.
What specific operational problems did the customer face before implementing BlueCat Micetro and how did those affect service delivery?
Before implementing Micetro the customer ran many inefficient Unix DNS and DHCP servers with high OS and software patching overhead and intensive day-to-day entry management. Centralized change control under complex SLAs meant a large team handled all DDI changes, creating lack of overview, slow service response across distributed global operations, and time-consuming retrieval of DNS, DHCP and IP address data for business units. This resulted in operational inefficiency, higher staffing costs, and slowed internal services until Micetro and automation were deployed.
What technical changes were made during the migration and how did those changes enable automation and real-time data access?
The migration consolidated DNS and DHCP infrastructure onto Microsoft Windows Server and moved IPAM data from a homegrown solution into BlueCat Micetro. Micetro’s flexible structure and its API enabled automated business processes and allowed users and departmental applications to retrieve DNS, DHCP and IP information in real time. An automated approval workflow was implemented so employees could request DNS changes while central administrators could approve or deny updates, eliminating manual ticket processing and enabling programmatic, faster operations.
What measurable outcomes and benefits did the company achieve after deploying Micetro and the automated approval workflow?
After deployment the company redeployed 80% of staff previously dedicated to managing the DDI infrastructure, substantially lowering labor costs. The automated approval workflow reduced change tickets through the service desk from about 500 per month to zero. Additional benefits included higher service levels, improved security and uptime of critical network resources, and significant overall cost savings driven by platform consolidation, automation, and real-time API access to DDI data.
The automated approval process workflow enabled all appropriate employees within the company to request DNS changes, and central administrators to approve or deny the update, reducing the number of change tickets to 0.
The challenge
The customer was managing a large number of inefficient Unix DNS and DHCP servers that required considerable and expensive administration overhead, both with regard to OS and software patching and also in the day-to-day management of entries.
The customer has an extremely dynamic environment as it invests heavily in R&D, resulting in fast-changing production sites. With distributed global operations and a growing product portfolio, the DDI environment is constantly changing. All changes to the DDI environment were performed centrally by a large team that worked according to complex and detailed SLAs they had with various departments within the company. This created an expensive and inefficient system that suffered from a lack of overview, and significantly slowed service within the company.
“Various business units need DNS, DHCP and IP address information for their internal operations. To retrieve those data was very inefficient and time-consuming. Now with the Micetro API, the users can automatically access information in real-time, providing the data needed for their departmental applications.”
Our solution
The customer selected BlueCat Micetro to upgrade the management of their critical network environment, combining the platform with automation of key business processes to get the greatest efficiencies.
A key part of the upgrade was to migrate all DNS and DHCP infrastructure to Microsoft Windows Server and move IPAM information from a homegrown solution into Micetro. With this first phase, the company was able to achieve great savings and efficiencies by redeploying 80% of the staff previously dedicated to managing the DDI infrastructure.
An automated approval process workflow was implemented enabling all appropriate employees within the company to request DNS changes, and central administrators to approve or deny the update. This reduced the number of change tickets through the service desk from about 500 per month to 0.
Benefits
The flexible structure of Micetro lends itself well to automating individual business processes within enterprises, which is what made this strategically critical project succeed. Our customer has increased their service levels, improved the security and overall uptime of their critical network resources, and achieved significant cost savings.
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