ParkView
Park Place Technologies on network monitoring, predictive fault diagnosis and repair; Entuity acquisition adds analytics
by Michael Cantor, CIO, Park Place Technologies
Introduction:
While network monitoring is a key component of predictive fault diagnosis and repair, it’s just one part of an overall solution to the network maintenance problem. Network monitoring, depending on the level of sophistication, can supply multiple data streams that contribute to fault diagnosis and repair. At the simplest level, a network monitor can notify on circuit up/down, overall bandwidth utilization on particular circuits, and individual network gear parameters, such as CPU usage. At the next level of sophistication, a network monitor can perform flow analysis and deep packet inspection to look for configuration issues or unexpected application traffic. And last, a network monitor may provide service delivery monitoring, combining all of the above to arrive at fault diagnosis from end-to-end across the network.
Network monitoring currently lags for the various cloud vendors, so providing coverage for IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) installations in the cloud as part of the overall solution is the next major area of development among the network monitors. That said, to get a truly useful picture of IT operations, an overall platform is needed to combine the data streams from all types of monitoring: hardware, operating system, database, and application, along with network monitoring to really get predictive of a fault.
For example, a performance problem is likely to be noted in the application first, and it can take days of effort to trace that performance problem to a defective or over-utilized piece of network gear that is intermittently losing packets. Combining all these inputs together, along with an AI layer, results in a platform that can make a difference in daily IT operations: accelerating fault diagnosis and reducing false alarms.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The ParkView™ platform:
It monitors customer hardware 24/7. When a fault is detected, ParkView™ instantly creates a ticket including the details necessary to resolve the issue, so there’s no need to call. ParkView™ identifies the exact nature of the issue and all relevant details to resolve it. ParkView™ will suppress all non-vital events including soft errors and status updates – only notifying you of issues that are pressing in nature.
Over time, ParkView™ leverages machine learning to detect faults before they even occur (i.e. predictive fault detection).
Other ParkView™ features include:
- Vendor-agnostic interface supports a wide range of OEMs, platforms, OS and generations
- Real-time visibility via Central Park customer portal
- Security features are based on your company’s unique requirements and all data transmitted to ParkView™ is SSL encrypted
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Case Study –Proactive detection of hardware faults in a telco environment:
Cincinnati Bell has seen demonstrable savings of time and money since adopting ParkView™, a service that proactively detects faults in storage, server and networking hardware.
ParkView™ is a revolutionary new remote service that proactively detects equipment hardware faults 24/7 across storage, server, and networking products. The related alerts are then securely transmitted to Park Place Technologies’ technical operations, enabling more timely and accurate failure diagnosis, part identification, and necessary repair actions. The company was able to save 8 hours per week not having to travel to remote data center to search for flaws.
A video describing the case study can be viewed here.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Importance of Entuity Acquisition:
Earlier this month, Park Place Technologies acquired Entuity, a specialist firm that offers networking monitoring and visibility, as well as asset control software. Entuity has offices in Boston and London. It’s s an established player in the network performance monitoring sector, where it provides the software analytics needed to keep networks performing, as well as visibility into issues before they impact business services.
For over 20 years, Entuity has focused on network performance monitoring to ensure uninterrupted service delivery. Entuity provides the analytics needed to keep networks performing and visibility into issues before they impact business services. Entuity is a perfect complement to Park Place Technologies as both organizations are customer-centric, have a deep-seated commitment to their employees and are laser-focused on maximizing customer up-time.
Park Place Technologies is the global leader in third-party maintenance for data center hardware, and this software acquisition will be a key component of its multi-vendor service delivery model. Following the acquisition, Park Place will be the only multi-vendor, global hardware maintenance provider that offers customers monitoring, automated maintenance, Network Operations Center (NOC) services, event management, probable cause and IT Data Analytics across a single pane of glass.
“This acquisition represents a milestone for Park Place Technologies as we welcome Entuity, a highly regarded network performance monitoring provider into the Park Place family,” said Chris Adams, President and CEO, Park Place Technologies. “When Entuity is integrated with our award winning ParkView™ monitoring product, we will deliver enhanced network visibility and NOC services, driving uptime for our global customer base.”
“It is exciting to see how this partnership will yield mutual benefits for both companies and their customers across the globe,” said Stephen Woodard, President and CEO, Entuity. “Entuity’s auto discovery and inventory capabilities, live topology, event management and probable cause analysis strengthens Park Place’s existing innovations and industry-leading solutions such as ParkView™.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Acknowledgement:
Thanks to Catie Gehlert of Global KWT for facilitating publication of this article.