Strate, the authorised central securities depository (CSD) in South Africa, is better leveraging its network and application performance management with the implementation of Fluke Networks' NetFlow Tracker by IT services and solutions provider, Datacentrix.
According to Manoj Puri, Strate's head of IT, the company needed to meet a number of key objectives with this project. "It was imperative that Strate have access to an up/down status of critical devices on the network, as well as a clear understanding of traffic flowing across the wide area network (WAN).
"We also needed to know the effect of specific transactions or applications on the network, the time taken for an application to complete a task and the impact of adding new applications or devices onto the network. At the same time, it was important that we be able to identify how a proof of concept (POC) going live influences the network."
Strate evaluated two options and opted for the Fluke Networks toolset, which they believed would provide the company with the ability to track and manage its network utilisation more closely.
"Within the first ten minutes of launching the POC, we were already able to identify problem areas on the network more easily. Since going live, we can now provide our clients with detailed network utilisation reports as well as track the type of traffic being sent and received over the WAN. In addition, we are able to view the behaviour of our applications and use this information to improve usage, while troubleshooting network or application issues much faster than before," explains Puri.
The implementation has also highlighted the improved efficiency of Strate's new infrastructure, identifying that some jobs previously taking more than two hours to run on the old infrastructure are now executing in less than two minutes.
"The NetFlow Tracker tool was the ideal selection for Strate as it provides greater insight into how traffic usage is impacting network performance,"
says Richard Tsalavoutas, optimisation specialist at Datacentrix. "It exposes what other reporting tools can't show you and reinforces the pitfalls of making business decisions based on partial, summarised information.
Not only is Strate able to use all of the tools purchased productively, the company also felt that the training received from Datacentrix was top-class and the company was very hands-on during the project. "Datacentrix went out of its way to accommodate Strate's needs," Puri continues. "We are very happy with the lengthy partnership Strate and Datacentrix have enjoyed.
This project took a long period to get off the ground and they took the time to fully understand our needs and met them completely," he concludes.
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