CLIENT CASE G4S
Achieved smarter monitoring, reducing false alarms to a minimum
G4S is the world’s largest provider of security outsourcing solutions, with operations in more than 125 countries and 620,000 employees worldwide G4S Greece, one of the companies belonging to the G4S Plc group, has a 35-year history and an extensive national network deployed throughout Greece, with operations in 33 cities and more than 2,500 employees. The company offers complete security solutions for public, private and corporate clients.
STARTING POINT
Its activities include manned services, aviation and port security solutions, cash-in-transit and shipping services, electronic security systems and a 24-hour alarm receiving center.
Its infrastructure consists of more than 50 servers with business and operational applications, and an MPLS network spanning more than 15 locations in Greece.
In the process of modernizing the IT division, the need for a monitoring tool that would provide timely alerts for problems affecting the infrastructure of the services offered was paramount.
Up to this point, the IT Division typically received incident notifications regarding end-user availability, which did not allow for adequate availability and manageability. In addition, a monitoring tool would also serve to minimize downtime from service outages.
PROJECT’S CHALLENGE
The requirements demanded a tool that had a graphical user interface for day-to-day management and use, supported a number of data collection methods, such as SNMP agent and local agents, and had to be able to integrate with other systems such as SMS gateway, corporate ticketing tool or active directory for user management.
This was the time when we started to formulate IT policies and procedures. These procedures included the selection of the appropriate solution, among other things.
So we got together, from senior employees to new hires, with different experiences in different systems and developed a set of functional requirements through some of the brainstorming sessions. These requirements ranged from the type of devices, operating systems and manufacturers that need to be supported, to the experience of support personnel with different environments.
We started looking for products that we had used in the past or had in mind and those that appeared as alternatives or competitors in specialized forums.
Pandora FMS was listed in one of the forums as a likely alternative to Nagios and screenshots of the user interface indicated that it was a product that our support team could easily get used to.
The feature set looked promising, so the product was included in the dossier for proper evaluation.
āDuring the evaluation of tools Pandora FMS stood out for being the easiest monitoring tool to configure within a given price range and the most complete in features and functionalities.”
Michalis Kamprianis. CISO, Head of IT Applications and Projects at G4S Greece
WHY PANDORA FMS?
Other tools were discarded for being focused on system availability and not being able to monitor application availability or for being unable to monitor non-Windows systems.
During the tool evaluation Pandora FMS stood out as the easiest monitoring tool to configure within a given price range and the most complete in features and functionality needed for our environment. The price was within our budget and we received very positive feedback from the support staff, which was obviously very important to us. Overall, Pandora FMS was the most complete tool out of all the ones we evaluated.
The Pandora FMS agent was progressively installed in all systems. The alerts were defined in a second phase. Meanwhile, massive operations such as copying alerts between servers has helped to make the definition faster. Now, the installation of the latest Pandora FMS agent is part of our standard server configuration procedures.
We were looking for a monitoring tool that would inform us about networks, servers and application outages. Ease of use and configuration were also important factors, as was the ability to monitor a complex network such as ours.
āPandora FMS has positioned itself as one of the most valuable and important tools in our environment. We fully trust Pandora FMS and it has not let us down at any time.”
Michalis Kamprianis. CISO, Head of IT Applications and Projects at G4S Greece
Today we monitor our entire infrastructure, using SNMP, WMI and ICMP monitors, as well as agents installed on the servers. We currently monitor virtual farms (VMWare) with more than 50 virtual and physical servers on Windows and more than 50 network devices and applications of some Linux distributions.
On most of these systems we monitor availability and performance. We also monitor SQL servers and Oracle databases for availability, legacy applications, specific Web-based services, multiple layers of applications for availability. We currently have more than 1,500 monitors on more than 85 agents.
What we like the most is the flexibility and a lot of ways of monitoring are essential for any monitoring tool. The feature that allows to configure agents remotely is also very important as we don’t have to access each server to make changes.
The “module templates” allow us to speed up the addition of servers and network devices, while the “Services” concept that allows service-based monitoring instead of server-based or even application-based monitoring is a much more necessary functionality for business reporting and good SLA definition and monitoring.
PANDORA FMS BENEFITS
We have not found a device that cannot be monitored with Pandora FMS and this is very important for us. Pandora FMS has been successfully integrated into our environments. We use the active directory for authentication.
Pandora FMS uses the corporate exchange servers to send email alerts and an SMS gateway for notifications whenever needed. Alerts are sent from Pandora FMS to our ticketing tool automatically, which helps us to keep a historical data for incidents.
Pandora FMS provides alerts on incident availability, a functionality that has allowed us to develop a 24/7 policy regarding the availability of our service.
Unscheduled service outages have been significantly reduced due to timely notifications and the user perspective of service availability has also been improved due to time resolution.
āWhenever we have needed technical support from Artica PFMS, we have been very satisfied with the speed of processing and problem resolution. The technical support staff is fully trained to identify the root cause of the problem and quickly provide the correct solution.”
Michalis Kamprianis. CISO, Head of IT Applications and Projects at G4S Greece
Every time we have needed technical support from Pandora FMS, we have been very satisfied with the speed of processing and problem resolution. The technical support staff is fully trained to identify the root cause of the problem and quickly provide the right solution. The business relationship regarding billing and renewal is also impeccable, transparent and flexible, which greatly facilitated the administrative process.
āThe product has matured significantly and this has given us the opportunity to perform more intelligent monitoring, minimizing false alarms so that engineers only have to work on the servers when necessary.”
Michalis Kamprianis. CISO, Head of IT Applications and Projects at G4S Greece
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