NETSCOUT Case Studies Global Home Fashion Retailer Assures Performance of Buyer Applications and Distribution Services in Production & Disaster Recovery Data Centers

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	Global Home Fashion Retailer Assures Performance of Buyer Applications and Distribution Services in Production & Disaster Recovery Data Centers NETSCOUT

Global Home Fashion Retailer Assures Performance of Buyer Applications and Distribution Services in Production & Disaster Recovery Data Centers

NETSCOUT

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Industries	Retail
Applicable Functions	Business Operation Logistics & Transportation
Use Cases	Remote Asset Management Supply Chain Visibility
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	The home fashion retailer faced a challenge in effectively monitoring network uptime and ensuring the delivery of critical voice and data applications and services. Network congestion issues were interfering with application performance in both production and backup data centers. If a buying office or distribution center went offline, the cost to the business was millions of dollars every hour that it was down. The IT team was tasked with monitoring network uptime and ensuring availability of mission-critical applications and services even in failover situations. Network congestion issues and lack of bandwidth, which interfered with application performance, presented a particularly vexing problem for the team. In addition, vitally important voice services were impacted, causing IT to literally pull their hair out trying to identify the root cause of the issues. Read More
About Customer	The customer is a global retailer specializing in discount apparel and home fashion. They offer customers a changing assortment of high-quality merchandise at discounted prices. With nearly four thousand stores spanning nine countries on three continents, generating in excess of $30 billion in annual revenues, this truly is a globally distributed business. To protect the business, this retailer maintains active backups sync’d between their primary datacenter and a disaster recovery location. For this home fashion retailer, always-on communication between stores, distribution centers, buying offices, datacenters, and disaster recovery locations, was absolutely crucial for ensuring that the right goods make it to the stores in a timely fashion. Read More
Solution	The retailer deployed the nGeniusONE Service Assurance Platform with Adaptive Service Intelligence™ (ASI) technology. They instrumented its primary and backup datacenters, distribution centers, and buying offices with InfiniStream appliances, the newest software-based InfiniStreamNG™ appliance, and nGenius Packet Flow Switches, so they can monitor network uptime and availability and quickly pinpoint congestion issues between the stores and distribution centers even in a DR scenario. nGeniusONE dashboards and grid were deployed to investigate issues both reactively and proactively. New dashboards are built ad hoc as problems arise. In addition, an OptiView XG handheld network analysis tablet was deployed to troubleshoot Wi-Fi connectivity issues at critical board of directors meetings. To support business assurance in a DR scenario, IT deployed a standby server in the DR datacenter, running a full instance of nGeniusONE configured as a hot standby for the server in the main datacenter. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud

Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software

Applicable Industries

Retail

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Logistics & Transportation

Use Cases

Remote Asset Management

Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

The home fashion retailer faced a challenge in effectively monitoring network uptime and ensuring the delivery of critical voice and data applications and services. Network congestion issues were interfering with application performance in both production and backup data centers. If a buying office or distribution center went offline, the cost to the business was millions of dollars every hour that it was down. The IT team was tasked with monitoring network uptime and ensuring availability of mission-critical applications and services even in failover situations. Network congestion issues and lack of bandwidth, which interfered with application performance, presented a particularly vexing problem for the team. In addition, vitally important voice services were impacted, causing IT to literally pull their hair out trying to identify the root cause of the issues.

About Customer

The customer is a global retailer specializing in discount apparel and home fashion. They offer customers a changing assortment of high-quality merchandise at discounted prices. With nearly four thousand stores spanning nine countries on three continents, generating in excess of $30 billion in annual revenues, this truly is a globally distributed business. To protect the business, this retailer maintains active backups sync’d between their primary datacenter and a disaster recovery location. For this home fashion retailer, always-on communication between stores, distribution centers, buying offices, datacenters, and disaster recovery locations, was absolutely crucial for ensuring that the right goods make it to the stores in a timely fashion.

Solution

The retailer deployed the nGeniusONE Service Assurance Platform with Adaptive Service Intelligence™ (ASI) technology. They instrumented its primary and backup datacenters, distribution centers, and buying offices with InfiniStream appliances, the newest software-based InfiniStreamNG™ appliance, and nGenius Packet Flow Switches, so they can monitor network uptime and availability and quickly pinpoint congestion issues between the stores and distribution centers even in a DR scenario. nGeniusONE dashboards and grid were deployed to investigate issues both reactively and proactively. New dashboards are built ad hoc as problems arise. In addition, an OptiView XG handheld network analysis tablet was deployed to troubleshoot Wi-Fi connectivity issues at critical board of directors meetings. To support business assurance in a DR scenario, IT deployed a standby server in the DR datacenter, running a full instance of nGeniusONE configured as a hot standby for the server in the main datacenter.

Impact #1	The NETSCOUT solution has allowed IT to shift from a reactive approach to its applications and service disruptions, and adopt a more proactive one.
Impact #2	NETSCOUT delivers effective end-to-end visibility into the performance of the retailer’s IT environment, which is critical to service assurance.
Impact #3	The IT team no longer has to defend the network first, allowing them to focus on finding and quickly resolving problems – in particular ensuring voice quality and bandwidth availability from the data center to buying offices, distribution centers and their disaster recovery site.

Impact #1

The NETSCOUT solution has allowed IT to shift from a reactive approach to its applications and service disruptions, and adopt a more proactive one.

Impact #2

NETSCOUT delivers effective end-to-end visibility into the performance of the retailer’s IT environment, which is critical to service assurance.

Impact #3

The IT team no longer has to defend the network first, allowing them to focus on finding and quickly resolving problems – in particular ensuring voice quality and bandwidth availability from the data center to buying offices, distribution centers and their disaster recovery site.

Benefit #1	Minimized downtime in primary and back up data centers saving the business millions of dollars in revenue.
Benefit #2	Saved significant time and money by finding and fixing problems faster.

Benefit #1

Minimized downtime in primary and back up data centers saving the business millions of dollars in revenue.

Benefit #2

Saved significant time and money by finding and fixing problems faster.

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Overview

Global Home Fashion Retailer Assures Performance of Buyer Applications and Distribution Services in Production & Disaster Recovery Data Centers

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit