Thanks to Infoblox and Cisco you can now get a glimpse of the impact that new initiatives (on the horizon for most of the world’s largest corporations) will have on your network and the ultimate evolution of dynamic infrastructure.  This glimpse will give you a broader perspective on how your role today will be shaped by tomorrow’s demands.

Why Dynamic Infrastructure Matters

Cisco has predicted that the network will connect 14 billion devices by 2010.  This level of connectivity promises to make the network even more strategic to business operations in coming years, as Cisco's Chambers has already suggested.  Yet on the horizon are even bigger challenges for the network as enterprises look to IT to automate even more aspects of their business and IT infrastructure.  Increased automation in systems and endpoints means even more changes for network professionals to manage.

New Initiatives Introducing Higher Velocities of Change

Many new initiatives, from virtualization and RFID to cloud computing introduce higher velocities of change for systems and endpoints because they introduce new capabilities for the movement of users and application workloads.  Virtualization, for example, automates the setup, tear down and movement of a server and its application.  VMotion enables servers to decouple from hardware and move to other hardware.

Virtualization is a critical enabler of cloud computing because it automates systems and allows for even higher efficiencies in server utilization and consolidation including the ability for a server to move from one IP address to another.  Server operations teams see massive gains in productivity via automation as long as the network can keep up with the movement.  The challenge is that networks are static, especially in relation to the new world of agile, utility-like computing.

If networks cannot keep up with the dynamic changes enabled by initiatives like virtualization, application availability and the business case for IT automation-based initiatives will suffer. 

DNS, DHCP and IPAM Automation are Strategic to these Initiatives

Business case erosion and network outages will ultimately draw more attention to the core network services on which all of these initiatives depend.  Those networks which have automated core network services will be better equipped to keep up with these changes; they will be more dynamic.  Those which continue to rely upon manual labor will experience more outages, incur more costs and be much less flexible.

Today, many network administrators will tell you that they don’t see a big impact on networks resulting from virtualization.  This is very telling: the impacts are there indeed, but they’re more visible to the server and application teams- who’s clout has grown (and who today commands an increasing slice of IT attention and budget).

Network administrators who understand the bigger picture impacts of these new initiatives will become more strategic to their departments and will be better equipped to help their teams approach challenges from a policy level, versus reacting to change and configuration events on a one off basis.

These pros will also become the champions of new approaches to tackle these new issues.  They will be able to add even more strategic value to new IT initiatives.  They will also have more influence over what it takes to make networks more dynamic and available, and will be able to meet these new emerging demands.

You can register for this event here.  You may even want to invite your teammates and IT executives to attend.