Even with the complex network infrastructure environment for educational institutions, Infoblox officials say they can ensure "agile, resilient and predictable network services."

Infoblox (News - Alert), a network management software provider, helps customers "work smarter, not harder by automating many of the normal daily grind tasks that take staff off other critical functions," company officials say, adding that "increasing efficiency with network automation combined with the control and knowledge of network change and behavior greatly improves overall service availability and network uptime."

Infoblox markets their products as helping educational institutions meet network service requirements for their ever-changing needs: "The single, integrated interface and hardened appliances with patented high-availability grid technology reduce the risk for outages normally associated with Microsoft (News - Alert) or Unix server platforms," they say, adding that "the tracking and auditing for DNS, DHCP, IP address and network changes meet compliance requirements and help identify potential issues faster and easier than the traditional reactive troubleshooting approach."

Among the benefits mentioned by company officials are that the product delivers high-availability and secure infrastructure with easy to deploy, high-availability appliances; ensures continuous uptime with patented grid technology and centralized management, reduces cost and increases visibility with built-in, automated IP address management; eliminates unnecessary risk of human error or misconfiguration across multi-vendor environments; mitigates risks with proactive monitoring and tracking for malicious attacks or unplanned events; scales to meet the most complex, distributed environments within the education sector; enables staff to focus on more business-impacting initiatives instead of the typical reactive, manual approach; and shows the impact of changes to the health and stability of the network.

Earlier this week TMC's (News - Alert) Carolyn J. Dawson wrote that Enterprise Management Associates, a research analyst firm, and Infoblox announced the results of a survey on the usage of automated network management software tools and technologies. The automated network management tools and technologies aid organizations in improving their speed implementation and reducing costly errors while executing strategic IT initiatives such as virtualization, cloud computing, IPv6 and compliance rollouts, while removing manual or human errors.