Improving Governance, Security and Cost with Unified DDI Management

Project Objectives

Key Benefits

In addition to its 17,000 retail outlets in France, le groupe La Poste is now present in 63 countries, across 5 continents. This local presence is ensured daily by the 160 different professions exercised by the group’s 238,000 employees.

As it looks to evolve and transform, le groupe La Poste has opted for a multi-activity business model with mail, banking, parcels, a network of retail outlets, digital tools, and more. All are guided by a single objective: to make le groupe La Poste the leading provider of local services for everyone, everywhere, every day.

Each year, the group distributes more than 17 billion items (letters, printed advertising, parcels) around the world. In 2022, it achieved a turnover of 35.4 billion euros, of which 44% abroad.

By adopting EfficientIP’s SOLIDserver solution, we were able to simplify the management of DDI services within the group while reducing the costs associated with multiple solutions and ensuring a higher level of security for all subsidiaries.
Alain Boudou, Service Owner of the DDI solution

Situation and Challenges Being Faced

i-TEAM, one of the Group’s IT departments (acting as a centre of IT expertise for the La Poste Group), wanted to offer a single solution to all of the Group’s entities as a repository for IP addresses and domain names. It was also to be backed up by internal and external IP address distribution and name resolution services. The idea was also to simplify the global management of the DDI (DNS, DHCP and IPAM), to reduce costs and to improve security and compliance, thus contributing to a better governance of its information system.

Previously a user of Infoblox, i-TEAM found this solution too rigid and not user friendly enough for the delegated users, who found it difficult to get to grips with the tool and were making configuration errors. I-TEAM also wanted to easily adapt its new solution to its specific needs to meet some of its requirements. Amongst these, the IT service centre wanted to reinforce the solution’s intrinsic security (partitioning), and to be able to simply deploy personalised management policies for the different entities.

The Solution Implemented

i-TEAM commenced the roll-out of the EfficientIP solution within its own infrastructure. Leveraging the flexibility of SOLIDserver, the IT service centre was able to fine-tune the solution to its needs, including the creation of delegated administrator spaces to meet its cyber charter. Several control systems were also added around EfficientIP offering to ensure that the IPAM solution is fully partitioned and cannot be accessed via any unauthorized desktop. i-TEAM was also able to standardise the roll out of DDI resources by applying its naming rules and conventions. For example, for post offices, the IT service centre has implemented identification codes in the EfficientIP solution that automate the setting and roll out of DDI rules that must be applied to new addresses assigned to them. «One of the great benefits of the EfficientIP solution is its flexibility, which allows us to quickly adapt it to our most specific needs. We can also count on the unfailing support of the EfficientIP teams in these implementations», explains Alain Boudou, Service Owner of the DDI solution at i-TEAM.

Main Results

«By adopting the EfficientIP solution, we were able to simplify the management of DDI services within the group while reducing costs and ensuring a higher level of security for all subsidiaries», explains Alain Boudou. The various entities of the La Poste Group thus retain control over their addressing plan while benefiting from a service entirely managed by i-TEAM with performance and availability levels guaranteed by SLA.

La Poste benefits from a centralized and global management of its addressing plan, which makes it possible to improve the governance of the information system and network security. i-TEAM can easily push security updates to all the entities of the group and also minimizes configuration errors thanks to unified governance and increased visibility. The architecture is also robust and resilient and can support multiple devices going offline without affecting service continuity and performance.

Future Plans

In line with its mission, i-TEAM will continue to onboard as many of La Poste Group’s subsidiaries as possible to the EfficientIP solution. i-TEAM can rely on EfficientIP’s network discovery and IP synchronisation solution to facilitate this migration for subsidiaries. i-TEAM has also moved from a physical server mode to a virtual machine (VM) strategy to facilitate the management and evolution of its IPAM solution.

Among the most important projects, security is also key. Through this greater integration between the DDI solution and its security architecture, i-TEAM wishes to set up increased automation of the roll out and configuration of security devices (firewalls, IAM, etc.) for even greater efficiency of the NetSecOps teams.

One of the main benefits of SOLIDserver is its flexibility, which allows us to quickly adapt it to our most specific needs.
Alain Boudou, Service Owner of the DDI solution at i-TEAM