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Entuity has enterprise, government, management service provider and outsource customers.
Most have diverse needs and a mixture of core and departmental network infrastructures based around a variety of standards. They all face some unique problems. The volume of IP traffic is growing exponentially, driven by huge increases in email and web access and the rapid deployment of Intranet and e-business applications. And the services that must be delivered - either to end customers or internal users - are becoming more complex.
Entuity helps these customers ensure optimum service availability often based on tough Service Level Agreements. In addition, our technology identifies, resolves and anticipates faults on their networks, along with preventing their recurrence.
Customer Profiles
Co-operative Financial Services
Managing its network effectively is key for any organisation, but when a merger or acquisition has recently taken place, as in the case of Co-operative Financial Services, it becomes a much bigger issue. Previously independent networks need to integrate successfully in order to allow the IT infrastructure to work efficiently and support the business function. Learn how CFS uses Entuity Eye of the Storm to proactively manage its successfully integrated IT infrastructure by identifying and fixing issues before they affect business users. Read more >>
IBM
Two IBM divisions rely upon Eye of the Storm for sustained network service delivery. IBM Global Services is the world's largest information technology services provider. To maintain its market leadership, IBM must meet or exceed customers' contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs). IBM Network Outsourcing Services provides a managed and integrated network solution for businesses that do not want to own or run their network or network resources. Find out how both divisions use Eye of the Storm for network management. Read more >>
HBOS Card Services
As one of the largest banks and mortgage companies in Britain, HBOS Card Services provides classic credit, affinity and lifestyle cards. Since card processing occurs across several distributed locations, HBOS needed a solution to optimize its network to improve efficiencies and quickly and easily incorporate new functionality. Learn why HBOS selected Entuity Eye of the Storm to re-allocate equipment, improve MTTR, and receive early warning of problems to prevent impact to service delivery. Read more >>
Magellan Health Services
With $1.7 billion in annual revenues, Magellan Health Services is the largest provider of behavioral healthcare services in the U.S. Magellan Health Services are migrating offices to central platforms and consolidating redundant networks, while still requiring 24-hour, seven-day-a-week customer access to online resources and information. Learn why IT Operations selected Entuity Eye of the Storm to improve MTTR, benefit from impact analysis, and prioritize problems based on business needs to prevent service disruptions. Read more >>
Orange County Teachers Federal Credit Union
The Orange County Teachers Federal Credit Union's (OCTFCU) vision is to deliver worldclass personal service to members through its 100 automated teller machines (ATMs), 24-hour automated telephone transaction service, and online banking system. OCTFCU recognizes that delivering exceptional value means providing operational excellence by combining service with technology and continually streamlining procedures, business processes and IT systems. Learn why OCTFCU selected Entuity Eye of the Storm to manage service delivery and exceed service level agreements. Read more >>
Perot Systems
IT services can be transformative in today’s information economy, delivering a competitive edge to companies who use them effectively to keep businesses solvent and cost effective in tough economic times. But acquiring the skills and expertise to implement and remain current with the abundance of rapidly changing technological solutions can take resources beyond those of even large enterprises. For more than two decades, Perot Systems has been a worldwide provider of information technology services and business solutions, developing the right experience and expertise by working to keep customers in a variety of industries ahead of the curve. Central to the technology and business solutions designed and implemented for end customers is the network as it provides the critical connectivity and economy of scale required to deliver IT services. Perot Systems uses Entuity’s Eye of the Storm (EYE) as one of its key network management solutions for its roster of clients worldwide. Read more >>
SFS Group
With a global manufacturing and distribution network of more than 65 sites in 21 countries throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, centrally managing and serving the SFS Group’s critical business services for the more than 4100 employees may seem an insurmountable task, but that’s just an average day for the technology and operations team at SFS services AG. Based in two centralized data centers located in Heerbrugg, Switzerland, all of the company’s main business, communication, storage, accounting, customer management, and ordering systems are hosted for maximum efficiency and ease of maintenance. Learn how the SFS Services connects users at all of these sites – and the SFS Group to its customers – through a complex and distributed network infrastructure providing the foundation for business productivity managed by Entuity Eye of the Storm. Read more >>
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota is dedicated to teaching and learning, research and discovery, and public engagement. The University serves more than 80,000 students and faculty. Keeping its distributed community well-connected 24x7 is vital to the University. Learn how the University of Minnesota uses Entuity Eye of the Storm to strategically manage and upgrade their complex network. Read more >>
Managing its network effectively is key for any organisation, but when a merger or acquisition has recently taken place, as in the case of Co-operative Financial Services, it becomes a much bigger issue. Previously independent networks need to integrate successfully in order to allow the IT infrastructure to work efficiently and support the business function.
Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) was formed by the merging of two individual organisations - Co-operative Insurance Society and the Co-operative Bank (including smile, the Internet bank). It now offers a complete range of financial products, ranging from online and high street banking to credit cards and insurance. The company has more than 10,000 employees who are spread out among eight large offices and 99 bank branches, plus 25 remote locations for the insurance division. Previously, the individual companies ran two separate networks, but as a result of the merger, these have been integrated into one.
The new single network now handles applications including financial management tools; call centres for the banking and insurance divisions; all of the software and security for smile; and mainframe applications. As well as running an increased number of systems, the infrastructure also has to support more offices and employees. As a result, it was decided that network management software was required to assist with monitoring of traffic, tracking devices and identifying any faults quickly.
To choose which software to deploy, CFS identified its requirements internally and used these to carry out a paper evaluation on six of the leaders in the network management industry, as identified by analyst houses Gartner and Forrester. This produced a shortlist of two products, which were put into a proof-of-concept trial. Entuity's network management software, EYE of the Storm 4.0 (EYE), most closely matched the criteria laid out by CFS and proved to be the obvious choice.
IBM Global Services is the world's largest information technology services provider, with nearly 150,000 professionals serving customers in 160 countries and annual revenue of more than $33 billion (2000). It mission is to integrate IBM's broad range of capabilities, services, hardware, software and research - as well as products and solutions from other vendors - to help companies of all sizes realize the full value of IT.
Meeting and beating SLAs
The key to any successful relationship between a service provider like IBM and its customer is to match or exceed mutually agreed service level agreements (SLAs). While this is relatively easy as far as applications and servers are concerned, it is much more difficult to guarantee network SLAs.
The changing nature of network technology, combined with the limitations of traditional network management solutions mean that a highly accurate assessment of the nature and state of a customer's network is required before even bidding for business. As the volume of IP traffic expands, driven by massive email and web use, and the rapid deployment of Intranet and e-business applications are put at the very core of customers' business plans, it is essential that a true picture of any network can be drawn.
IBM outlined three critical requirements expected from a 'next-generation' network management solution.
Fast network discovery
The first was understanding of the exact nature of the network. This meant discovering the maximum possible about every asset as quickly as possible, as well as the relationship between them. Gaining a quick, accurate picture of the network as it is allows the service provider to set service levels and expectations realistically. This would position IBM ahead of its competition, providing the best service at the best price.
Fault anticipation
The second requirement was the need to pro-actively manage network performance - and to distinguish between network, server and application problems - by identifying faults and degradation and understand their business impact before any problems emerge.
Fast installation and implementation
IBM's third condition was a fast track, out-of-the-box installation capability. IBM wanted as much of the work to be done during the due diligence phase, a critical phase of any client relationship.
Bernie Newnham, IBM's LAN Management Architect for Northern Europe evaluated a number of network management solutions. He chose Entuity based on the criteria above.
Risk management out-of-the-box
"Eye of the Storm requires little configuration or maintenance. It is hugely proactive -- it just goes and gets the information, down to the port level. We use it to manage our risk with customers. Getting information wrong in the due diligence phase potentially has a huge impact on the profitability of the contract. Entuity provides an accurate asset inventory of hardware, bandwidth and people requirements."
The product integrates fault management, performance management and inventory management in one solution that stands alone or works with a customer's chosen platform and favourite tools. In the UK, IBM Global Services has also deployed Eye of the Storm to manage its own e-SNI network, which underpins IBM's remote managed services offering. Within 30 minutes of installation, Eye of the Storm was able to identify a power supply module fault on a Cisco switch device that was to be commissioned in two weeks.
By integrating Entuity into its network operator's toolkit in the UK, IBM's aim is to reduce the level of expertise required to manage the network, freeing up senior resources to concentrate elsewhere. The product has no deployment or integration costs and there is no need for thousands of man-hours to add new services and functions.
Newnham describes Entuity as a "perfect world" solution. Once the problem has been identified, IBM can instantly identify which user is being affected and what the time to problem resolution is. This is extremely important when the customer's application is dependent on a complex transaction supply chain. IBM can determine where in the supply chain the problem is occurring and establish who is responsible for the service degradation and who will fix it. Being able to proactively monitor the service provided with a full end to end view is key when you are managing multiple services and service providers.
Read the Full IBM Customer Profile >>
IBM's Global Network Management Center delivers world-class network management using EYEIBM Network Outsourcing Services provides a managed and integrated network solution for businesses that do not want to own or run their network or network resources. By offering a fully-managed network, companies can use skilled networking professionals, leverage emerging network technologies and transfer their technology risk, while focusing on their core business.
Backed by the experience of managing hundreds of client networks supporting millions of end users worldwide, IBM provides a comprehensive solution designed to manage complex and dynamic networks. IBM can manage entire environments — including voice, data and video for wide area, local area or mobile communications — with proven expertise, platforms and tools and extensive global supplier relationships.
IBM uses Eye of the Storm as their core network management solution along with other strategic partners to quickly deliver a range of managed network solutions - from IP convergence, enhanced security and virtual private networks (VPNs), to distributed, edge-of-network server and storage computing environments and other next-generation network applications. IBM's consultative approach to life cycle management helps align the network strategy with business and IT objectives - flexibly adapting the network to meet the changing needs of customers.
HBOS Card Services is a subsidiary of Halifax Plc., one of the largest high street banks and mortgage companies in Britain. It provides a range of classic Gold and Platinum credit cards, as well as affinity and lifestyle cards for a wide range of organizations.
Network performance optimisation
Credit card processing is handled in several distributed locations across the UK and HBOS looked for a network management solution that could both optimize their current network to improve processing efficiency and incorporate new network functionality easily and fast. The chosen solution had to be able to handle very aggressive deadlines, provide fully integrated and comprehensive functionality and permit minimal network slowdown during deployment.
Mike Higgins, Network Services Manager for the group said that HBOS wanted a full-functioned solution covering fault management, inventory management and performance management that could be effective in as short a time possible.
Freeing up senior technical resources
"We implemented Entuity Eye of the Storm within hours. And because it required very little maintenance or training, it meant that almost from the get-go we could utilize junior staff for troubleshooting tasks."
"Before Entuity, these tasks had required much more senior attention before. The product showed a return almost immediately: it identified a server issue where incorrect network interface settings were causing many batch processing jobs to take up to eight hours to complete. After identification, processing time was trimmed to a mere 30 minutes."
Spare ports
Another clear immediate benefit was in switched port management. Higgins' team can easily auto-discover all of the switched ports already deployed within the HBOS network and not yet being utilized. This enables Halifax either quickly and accurately to reallocate ports (saving the manual effort traditionally associated with port identification) or to put back unnecessary (and costly) equipment purchases.
Higgins' network team knows that it will always face aggressive deadlines in which to implement new network projects, particularly those that have a direct impact on network performance. A recent example of this was the requirement to serve video across the corporate LAN. "Entuity Eye of the Storm optimises our network in performance and capacity terms, automatically identifying errors and providing early warning of any over utilization that will impact service delivery."
Reporting benefits
The network operations team also benefits from the product's reporting functionality that provides a real understanding of network performance, including network utilization and availability. Eye of the Storm identifies where faults and bottlenecks occur and how well each is managed. The product provides a simple and automated method to generate these reports, and provides the service level information HBOS requires.
In March 2003, Magellan Health Services filed for bankruptcy. By January 2004, Magellan restructured its debt, received an infusion of $150 million of capital, and successfully emerged from Chapter 11. Now more than ever, Magellan's primary goal is to maintain market leadership and to cost-effectively provide the best possible behavioral health service to its customers. To meet its goals and obtain a more responsive, consistent and streamlined operational model, Magellan is combining its knowledge and best practices into fewer, larger Care Management Centers and Strategic Business Units.
For Magellan, IT Operations is pivotal. Whether it's completing the challenging task of migrating offices to central platforms or consolidating redundant networks, IT Operations must maintain 24-hour, seven-day-a-week customer access to resources and information.
As Bob Odenheimer, Senior Vice-President of IT Operations explains, "Our goal is to manage the network to support our business. To ensure 100% access to our business systems, we need to know what equipment we have, what is not being used and how to identify potential problem areas to effectively manage traffic and bandwidth."
During the first attempt at consolidation, a migrated office began consuming huge amounts of bandwidth, creating performance issues. Rudimentary network tools provided little to no reporting capabilities, making it impossible for IT Operations to determine the source of the problem. "We realized that to continue migration, we needed more from a network management solution – we needed fault detection, performance monitoring, inventory management and in-depth reporting capabilities in one solution," Odenheimer states.
Magellan Health Services' Challenges- Network consolidation; eliminate redundancies, take advantage of equipment trade-ins and lower costs
- Consistent, reliable reporting to support and manage for 100% access
- Inventory management to determine resource capacity and effectively utilize bandwidth
- Stress testing of applications, and tracking and reporting on results
- Maintenance of high level of service for all customers.
As Greg Hammond, network engineer at Magellan explains, "With Entuity EYE, we have fault, performance and inventory management all in one tool. This makes our work more effective – rather than integrating and working with two or three tools, we easily learned and use one. Our team is now more responsive to customer requests."
Key to helping Odenheimer and his team choose Entuity's solution is that EYE consolidates and correlates three operational disciplines using a centralized repository, a powerful analytics engine, presentation and notification and unprecedented reporting.
Eye of the Storm Offers- Fault management that distinguishes between network, server and application problems using True Cause Analytics, prioritizing problems based on business impact.
- Performance management that predicts problems before costly business interruptions occur, using service degradation sensitivity
- Resource management that takes inventory of network assets, their connectivity, and their logical dependencies in parent-child and peer-to-peer relationships.
According to Hammond, the IT Operations team also selected Entuity EYE for its following features and capabilities:
- Management and network engineer level reports on uptime, device availability, device inventory and utilization
- Ability to work in conjunction with other management solutions
- Out-of-the-box flexibility, rapid implementation and ease of use
- Ability to configure EYE to meet their needs.
"During the pilot program and implementation of EYE, Entuity was
very responsive to our needs," explains Bob Odenheimer. "Entuity's willingness to be a true partner provided us with the ability to impact product planning for EYE, further helping us to meet our goals and objectives for better network operations and availability."
Securing the Enterprise Using Eye of the Storm resource management reports, Magellan Health Services recently identified a rampant computer virus, preventing widespread infection within the company.
"EYE's ability to track MAC and IP addresses on switches and routers proved to be an extremely useful feature," according to Greg Hammond. Magellan network sensors detected the virus scans and identified the infected IP address. "We entered the IP address into Entuity EYE and, with the touch of a button, determined which PCs and ports were infected and where they were located. EYE allowed us to rapidly shut down the infected ports and switches. To move so quickly was invaluable – we experienced little impact to our network and services."
Improved Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) With EYE implemented, the IT Operations team estimates it has decreased MTTR of problems involving PCs, servers and switches by two-thirds, freeing up valuable resources and increasing productivity.
Enhanced Support of Development IT Operations more effectively supports Magellan development teams. Utilizing EYE, the team helps stress test Magellan applications before they are released into production. Magellan network engineers drill down and determine what ports development servers use. Once this is determined, engineers track server and port utilization (volume of activity) during stress tests to determine where bottlenecks or bandwidth problems might occur. With Entuity EYE, IT Operations identifies faults in the network and proactively increases bandwidth, preventing problems in production.
Impact Analysis According to Bob Odenheimer, “Entuity EYE enables us to review the impact consolidation has on our WAN in real time. We proactively evaluate where we are and use this analysis to forecast future needs as our consolidation efforts continue. We plan to display performance reports on our Intranet so business units can review system availability at any time and management can determine how well IT operations is performing. With greater visibility for the entire organization, we effectively prevent service outages and communicate our effectiveness."
Challenges
The Orange County Teachers Federal Credit Union's (OCTFCU) vision is to deliver worldclass personal service to members through its 100 automated teller machines (ATMs), 24-hour automated telephone transaction service, and online banking system. OCTFCU recognizes that delivering exceptional value means providing operational excellence by combining service with technology and continually streamlining procedures, business processes and IT systems.
To deliver upon the OCTFCU vision, IT Operations is responsible for guaranteeing the organization's stated service level agreement (SLA) of 99.5% availability of services. As OCTFCU added new branches, new Members, and new applications, its SLA slipped to an average range of 98.9 to 99.1% availability.
Additionally, IT Operations relied on a rudimentary tool to "ping" their applications to determine availability. This "ping" capability was not adequate for truly measuring service degradation, performance or failure. As Dave Lugo, OCTFCU network engineer, explains, "We determined that a state-of-the-art solution providing event correlation and reporting capabilities was required to monitor the overall performance of our networks end-to-end and to generate meaningful alarms if a network event occurred."
As a not-for-profit organization, OCTFCU found balancing growth in membership with member expectations and budgetary responsibility to be a challenge. They needed a solution that could 'manage itself' – be easy to use, Web-based, and require no additional resources.
OCTFCU's Challenges
- Network performance and availability problems impacted the guaranteed SLA requirement of 99.5%
- No end-to-end service monitoring, no meaningful alarms
- Budgetary constraints
- Lack of consistent, reliable reporting
- High levels of member service to maintain
The Solution
After reviewing several solutions, OCTFCU selected Entuity Eye of the Storm (EYE) as its infrastructure management solution because it provided provided performance, availability and resource management all in one tool and it offered the most useful information to the IT Operations team.
"We selected Entuity's EYE because it provided both event suppression and fault correlation. With EYE, we easily find where a problem is occurring without the system logging everything that is being affected. With EYE, we are not inundated with alerts; rather we receive intelligent, meaningful information and act quickly," explained Lugo.
Instrumental to OCTFCU's decision was that Entuity EYE consolidates and correlates three crucial operational disciplines using a centralized repository, a powerful analytics engine,presentation and notification and unprecedented reporting.
IT services can be transformative in today’s information economy, delivering a competitive edge to companies who use them effectively to keep businesses solvent and cost effective in tough economic times. But acquiring the skills and expertise to implement and remain current with the abundance of rapidly changing technological solutions can take resources beyond those of even large enterprises. For more than two decades, Perot Systems has been a worldwide provider of information technology services and business solutions, developing the right experience and expertise by working to keep customers in a variety of industries ahead of the curve. Central to the technology and business solutions designed and implemented for end customers is the network as it provides the critical connectivity and economy of scale required to deliver IT services. Perot Systems uses Entuity’s Eye of the Storm (EYE) as one of its key network management solutions for its roster of clients worldwide.
With more than a thousand customers spanning the globe, the scope of many network projects routinely undertaken by Perot Systems trumps that of the traditional enterprise. Where a typical enterprise network will comprise of 20-50 devices, Perot Systems needed an easily scalable approach to manage nearly 4800 devices without additional personnel. For each new customer, Perot Systems must properly plan and configure the customer’s network while ensuring the adequate infrastructure is in place to support current and future needs. With EYE, Perot Systems is able to tackle the challenge of managing a sizeable number of devices, and the exponentially higher number of associated network elements.
With EYE, Perot Systems was able to migrate from three different platforms for fault management, performance management and reporting, to a single platform that performed all three functions collectively. These capabilities were available out of the box from Entuity. With EYE’s flexible, easy-to-use solution for network management, deployment did not require a huge commitment in terms of man hours from Perot Systems. Even better, there was little need for custom adaptations to EYE, even with the complex requirements of Perot Systems’ network management environment.
“Within days, EYE was up and running and had placed all of Perot Systems’ corporate network and those of its 60+ global customers under management,” said Dineta Cooper, lead subject matter expert for Perot Systems network management. “We were pleased that implementing EYE did not take an army of technologists to roll-out. In fact, the deployment was accomplished with just two people, freeing our other associates to focus on serving clients.”
With a global manufacturing and distribution network of more than 65 sites in 21 countries throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, centrally managing and serving the SFS Group’s critical business services for the more than 4100 employees may seem an insurmountable task, but that’s just an average day for the technology and operations team at SFS services AG. Based in two centralized data centers located in Heerbrugg, Switzerland, all of the company’s main business, communication, storage, accounting, customer management, and ordering systems are hosted for maximum efficiency and ease of maintenance. Connecting users at all of these sites – and the SFS Group to its customers – is a complex and distributed network infrastructure providing the foundation for business productivity.
Four business units comprise the SFS Group: SFS intec is a global development partner, manufacturer, and supplier of precision cold formed components, specialty fasteners, and mechanical fastening systems. SFS unimarket is a leading national supplier of fasteners, tools, architectural hardware, and chemical/technical products. SFS locher is an efficient, full-service supplier of steel, metal, building supplies, construction tools, and concrete reinforcement systems. SFS services is the group’s in-house service provider for finance, controlling, information technology, HR management, marketing services, and central support services. Although their product lines and markets they serve are diverse, they all share the main electronic business systems.
Using Entuity’s Eye of the Storm® (EYE), SFS services has implemented a network management solution that solves their operational challenges. With EYE, IT personnel have a top-down view of their entire network with separate views for each business location. The views include logical collections of all the network components that serve a particular business unit – comprising both local devices and central devices – to provide performance and operational forensics from the user’s perspective. This gives IT staff the information and insight required to make informed decisions about capacity and availability for optimum service delivery.
“EYE gives us a top-down, business-centric view of our network that we previously did not have,” says Patrick Bichler, manager Technology & Operations for SFS services AG. “This gives us clear visibility from a user’s perspective to the complete infrastructure serving each location – including devices both at the local facility and our central operations center – to better manage and reliably deliver services to our user community.”
The University of Minnesota is dedicated to teaching and learning, research and discovery, and public engagement. The University serves more than 80,000 students and faculty. It offers degrees in more than 370 fields of study through its four campuses (Twin Cities, Duluth, Morris, and Crookston), a collaborative center in Rochester, extension offices, and research and outreach centers
Keeping its distributed community well-connected 24x7 is vital to the University's Office of Information Technology (OIT). OIT's Networking and Telecommunications Services (NTS) group operates and manages the Twin Cities campus network. It provides front-end voice, data, and video communications services, including telephone and data connections and remote access services.
"The ability to integrate leading edge emerging technologies into our network infrastructure to support and improve it for future growth and sustained availability is crucial," states Pete Bartz, Manager Data Network, Design and Operations within the Networking and Telecommunications Services group. Reliable access to the network for its entire community helps the University in its overall goal of providing premier research and educational services. An in-depth review of the University's existing infrastructure highlighted that the Twin Cities campus data network, installed in 1997, had outlived its life expectancy of five years. "We were hitting a ceiling - we could not easily extend and add new technologies and services to the network to effectively support our community," explains Bartz.
The NTS group determined a major upgrade of the Twin Cities' campus network infrastructure was required. With a distributed and expanding network that already included 60,000 ports, the NTS group also determined it required a more effective and proactive means to monitor and manage the upgrade to a new network. The NTS group developed a detailed Request For Proposal (RFP) for the network upgrade, including a thorough section on network management, to replace the outdated systems.
Read the Full University of Minnesota Customer Profile >>
Read how the University of Minnesota Is Using EYE to build an energy efficient IT infrastructure >>
