We've been covering BlueCat's fantastic management appliances for years, and its Proteus IP Address Management has always fared well in some of our product comparisons. At this year's Interop, BlueCat announced version 2.5.

BlueCat describes its product as more of a platform, which sounds sexier, of course. Version 2.5 adds workflow so that there's a semblance of process control and approval before new IP services are rolled out. They've also added IP reconciliation and made some user interface changes.

BlueCat's CEO, Michael Hyatt, told us that with so many new devices (voice over IP, RFID) getting added to the network, and then IPv6 with its longer addresses and networks having to run both IPv4 and IPv6 stacks, there will be an even greater need for his company's appliance-based, one-price-fits-all model.