The Service Management Soapbox

DISCLAIMER: First, let me make one thing clear … despite my prior position with EMC, I do not have any insider information on what I am about to write below. I am merely observing and analyzing what is obvious to me or to anyone else who has enjoyed long-term, broad market exposure the way I have. Everything below is public knowledge and opinion.

One of the great rumors in the management software business for nearly a decade (maybe longer) is that EMC Corporation and BMC Software would join forces via a “merger.” In almost all cases, what people were actually referring to was an acquisition of BMC by EMC. I steadfastly posit that true mergers are rare and almost all attempts are failures (e.g., Daimler-Chrysler and Bay Networks, both huge disappointments). As the bigger fish, EMC would have taken over BMC, period.

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The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of distributed systems. It is so basic and so widespread that it has become nearly invisible. As a service so obscured from view, it may seem inconsequential. Nothing can be further from the truth. It is, in fact, one of the main underpinnings of everything we do so it can wreak havoc when it malfunctions.

We just take it for granted that our DNS is functioning flawlessly behind the scenes, but is it? Many performance and availability issues are misdiagnosed because of our blind faith in DNS. It is without doubt one of technology’s great innovations, but nothing in IT should be trusted so blindly. It turns out many DNS installations are misconfigured.

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