Notification of network faults just isn't good enough any more - predicting them before they impact network availability is key. Getronics Australia is expanding its network management offering in Australia by providing predictive network management services. This allows Getronics to focus on delivering proactive and preventive maintenance of its customers' networks from its Network Management Centre in Belrose, Sydney.
As part of the new offering, Getronics has invested in Concord Communications' eHealth network management suite. This software provides network fault, performance and availability management across multiple vendor equipment types and versions. eHealth complements Getronic's existing HP OpenView solution by providing detailed data analysis and reports concerning the health of it customers' networks.
The first Australian customer to take advantage of Getronics' new service is TransAction Solutions, a company that delivers services such as data processing, systems integration and communications solutions to credit unions. With 11 Australian credit unions consisting of 130 branches and 3000 users dependent on TransAction Solutions and the cost of downtime valued at approximately $100,000 per hour, network failure is simply not an option.
"Yes, it gives us technical information, but I see the Concord reports more as a business tool," says Guy Light, General Manager at TransAction Solutions. During the three month testing period, we identified 30 issues that would potentially impact our systems and we were able to fix them or modify the network usage patterns at minimal expense.
"Research shows that 65 per cent of failures are predictable and therefore avoidable, but I believe that figure is actually much higher. Our SLAs allow for 10 minutes outage per month, so predictive alarms that allow us to take corrective action before end users are impacted have a big impact on our bottom line."
