Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Top Tips is a weekly column where we explore emerging trends in technology and share practical ways to stay ahead. This week, we're looking at how technology can nudge us into unnecessary spending—and how to avoid it. Have you ever bought one thing and then felt the need to buy several more to match it? If so, you've experienced what is known as the Diderot Effect. The term comes from the life of Denis Diderot, a famous French philosopher who spent much of his wealth in a matter of months.

For network administrators, managing DNS has traditionally meant juggling zones and records across separate server interfaces, manually tracking changes, and responding to resolution failures after they’ve already caused disruption. We’re excited to introduce Microsoft DNS management in ManageEngine OpUtils, bringing DNS zone and record administration directly into the same console you already use for IP address management (IPAM).

Top Tips is a weekly column where we highlight what’s trending in the tech world today and list ways to explore these trends. This week, we’re looking at which tasks you can delegate to AI. We've all struggled to delegate tasks. Whether you're a junior struggling to prioritize your tasks on a daily basis or a manager unsure of assigning responsibilities, you know how messy task delegation can get. Some people just improvise while others have a method to this madness.

Microsoft 365 plays a critical role in modern business communication and collaboration with services such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business. However, many organizations overestimate Microsoft 365’s native protection and recoverability. In reality, Microsoft 365 operates under a shared responsibility model. While Microsoft ensures infrastructure availability and uptime, organizations are responsible for protecting and recovering their data.

If you manage enterprise networks, this scenario probably sounds familiar: An IP conflict surfaces, connectivity drops for a group of users, and the confusion begins. You check your DHCP server, dig through scope utilization, and try to piece together what went wrong, often after the disruption has already occurred. For years, network administrators have needed a single console for visibility and control into DHCP.

Top Tips is a weekly column where we highlight what’s trending in the tech world today and list ways to explore these trends. This week, we’re looking at why convincing AI answers can still be wrong and how to catch them before they slip through. AI doesn’t fail the way it used to. It doesn’t give obviously wrong answers. It gives answers that are just right enough to trust. And that’s exactly why we stop questioning it. It fits into our workflow so easily.

Top Tips is a weekly column where we look at what’s shaping the tech world and share practical ways teams can stay prepared for what’s next. This week, we’re focusing on a situation many teams underestimate—what happens to your IT systems when a key leader steps away, and how you can build stability that doesn’t rely on any one person. Some problems don’t show up when things are running smoothly. They show up when someone leaves.

Does it ever feel like the days of simple, user- and pocket-friendly digital services are now a bygone era? Is everything just a reminder of how things used to be better? Dramatic language and rose-tinted glasses aside, you would be naive not to notice that service providers are becoming increasingly predatory, especially when it comes to monetization. Ads are everywhere, privacy policies are questionable at best, and costs keep rising.

Most cloud cost dashboards are built for one audience. The finance team wants to see totals by department. The engineering team wants to see costs by service. The DevOps team wants to see environment-level breakdowns. When everyone looks at the same dashboard, nobody gets what they actually need. This is where tailored cloud cost visibility starts to matter. When a team can see its own costs clearly, it moves faster, takes ownership, and starts treating cost data like it actually matters.

Top tips is a weekly column where we highlight what’s trending in the tech world and share ways to stay ahead. This week, let's look at a few ways you can make your thoughts your own in this era of information overload. Have you noticed how you think about life decisions, current affairs, and spending patterns? Why do you think a certain way? Is it your upbringing, the media, or the internet?