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Network Monitoring Services
Today's advanced networks have changed the dynamics of the competitive marketplace, improved the way companies conduct business, and forever changed the way organizations work. Businesses and other institutions are leveraging these services to lower cost, increase profits, identify new opportunities and improve customer service.
Therefore, network managers can no longer be passive in their management approach. Waiting to fix a problem after it occurs will result in lost revenue, lost opportunities to acquire new customers and serious customer service issues. Performance problems lead to a high level of user dissatisfaction, and cost overruns are rarely tolerated in today's demanding environments.
That's where Network Monitoring Services (NMS) can help. The Brentwood, Tennessee-based service provider offers the highest level of telephone system and network availability and performance for their customers throughout the country with highly distributed networks. NMS focuses on remotely monitoring and managing devices for alarms like those found on PBX switches, voice mail systems, VoIP systems, SNMP-enabled devices and other mission-critical telecommunications equipment. NMS also manages alarms based on environmental conditions by collecting data and analyzing it at NMS's own data center. And for those scenarios where a hardware device is required onsite, the company utilizes the SNMP-Link SL81 Remote Site Manager from Asentria.
Before NMS began using the Asentria SL81, it was experiencing difficulty collecting data from customers' remote sites that couldn't be accessed directly via dial-up or over the network.. There were times when customers were experiencing outages on their networks and NMS didn't have any data to help them understand what issues were creating the problems. Without this capability, NMS was just like any other monitoring service: blind to issues at remote locations that could cause a potential disruption to an entire network. NMS decided it needed a more proactive approach to gather this information.
NMS contacted a list of vendors to understand what solutions NMS could use to proactively monitor and gather information on the condition of their customers' remote locations, and bring the data back to its database for analysis. Asentria was the only vendor NMS contacted that was able to work with it to develop a custom product to fit exactly what NMS was looking for, and fit it onto NMS's existing infrastructure.
“Asentria worked with us to customize the SL81 to fit our needs perfectly,” said Randy Noe, National Account Executive at NMS. “They also provided us with an Asentria Data-Link DL50 Pollable Remote Access Unit that collects call detail recording (CDR) data. The SL81 brought us additional business from Nortel customers by making our equipment interoperable with Nortel switches.”
The solution Asentria provided gave NMS the ability to proactively monitor and manage customers' network conditions, including CDR statistics and environmental conditions.
The results have been astounding. For example, the main air conditioning unit at one of NMS's customer's remote sites shut off. The facility was close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and didn't provide enough air circulation for the coils on the A/C unit to cool. However, with the SL81's ability to provide remote visibility into the environmental conditions, NMS was able to proactively notify their customer's personnel. From its data center, the customer was able to turn on the remote site's auxiliary A/C unit and cool down the coils down, keeping the facility up and running.
Occasions like these happen regularly, without disruption to network service. NMS's policy of proactive network management has staved off most preventable network downtime issues, saving it from losing customers to other vendors.
“There are plenty of other monitoring services that can react to a disaster,” said Noe. “However, being proactive has been the critical piece to our success, and our customers have come to appreciate it, and expect it from us.”
While proactively monitoring the network isn't the be-all, end-all to keeping networks up and running, it does provide a way to eliminate preventable disruptions from occurring. NMS has found using Asentria's SL81 as a network monitoring service to be an added benefit to keeping customers' remote sites up and running. NMS's visibility into these networks has enabled it to understand exactly what was happening and take steps to fix the problem before issues get out of hand.
The Company
Asentria develops remote site monitoring and telemanagement solutions that enable providers of critical communications infrastructure to more efficiently and reliably run their networks. Asentria’s products help ensure quality of service and lower operational costs, while making it easier to provision, maintain and support remote equipment. Our strategic solutions fit both large and small communication networks and provide high-value, cost-effective and competitive differentiators to our customers.
Asentria helps administrators cost-effectively manage their call reporting data and remote site infrastructure, while extending confidence and security to ensure availability, integrity and performance. Asentria enables administrators to avoid failures from poor performing equipment that threaten end-user service expectations, while providing better control to predict the performance of remote infrastructure. These new levels of protection shield end-users from remote site equipment failure. Our service provider and enterprise customers trust their remote equipment sites to Asentria. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
