With dramatic increase in IP addresses, coupled with rapid rise in the adoption of virtualization and cloud computing, network automation and control is becoming crucial for its growth and efficient management. As senior analyst Jim Frey of Enterprise Management Associates, says, “There is little, if any, hope for manual processes to keep pace with the rate of change introduced by server virtualization and cloud services. The only reasonable answer is automation.”

Hence, to provide automation, visibility and control over many traditionally manual IT tasks, network infrastructure control solutions provider Infoblox has integrated two network technologies into one box. The company has integrated its unique Grid based IP address management (IPAM) technology with recently obtained network change and configuration (NCCM) capabilities through the acquisition of Netcordia. Infoblox (News - Alert) acquired Netcordia, the developer of NCCM solution, in June.

In fact, according to Infoblox, this integration demonstrates its commitment to give enterprises more visibility, control and automation across their network infrastructures. NetMRI 4.3 is the result of this integration, which further enhances the capabilities of standard NetMRI, originally developed by Netcordia (News - Alert).

In a company statement, commented Steve Nye, executive vice president of product strategy and corporate development, “The combination of Infoblox’s proven real-time distributed network data management technology – already in use by more than 4,500 customers and 200 of the Global 500 – with the innovative configuration, analysis and discovery capabilities provided by NetMRI will address mounting enterprise needs to dramatically increase the visibility and control required to handle the ever-increasing complexity of today’s networks.”

Likewise, in another statement, Infoblox customer Johniel Marrero, network specialist at Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center, which has both Infoblox NetMRI and IPAM solutions, said, “The value of Infoblox products is derived from the power of automation, robust management capabilities and network visibility. Instead of the normal mundane and time consuming processes, Infoblox’s automation and control is essential to help our team ensure we are providing a flawless guest experience by maintaining a network infrastructure that is completely under our control and performing precisely as we expect.” He further added, “We see that the combination of the two technologies will bring an exponential increase in control and visibility that is extremely valuable as we look to adopt virtualization and expand our network.”

According to Infoblox, NetMRI is the industry’s only NCCM solution that offers a powerful automation tool and management visibility into the health, policy and compliance of the network. It enables enterprise IT organizations to collect and analyze network infrastructure configurations, identify best practice and security policy violations, see the impact of change on health, and proactively identify, verify and remediate issues – all essential to meet compliance regulations and help prevent network downtime.

Combining Grid (real-time data distribution technology) based IPAM capabilities with NCCM, NetMRI version 4.3 offers many improvements, such as expanded discovery, inventory and real-time tracking of IP addresses, auto population of network discovery data collected by the NetMRI into IPAM interface, auto configuration of customer network definition with IPAM, and automated network DHCP relay configuration, providing efficiency and reducing risk of errors when updating network configurations.

The Infoblox NetMRI version 4.3 is now available on Infoblox physical and virtual appliance platforms. Pricing for the Infoblox NetMRI starts at $15,290 in the U.S.