Empowered Networks

Overview

Whether its event/fault, performance or configuration issues that are on your agenda, and whether it’s network, server, or applications we have the tools and people to help you with:

Picking the right tools:

No one tool does everything.  The right tools depends on your environment, what you’ve already got installed and what you want to accomplish.  There is no one-size fits all answer, but we know many of them, we use them all, and we can help you select the right tools to meet your specific needs whether it’s:

• Event and Fault Management
• Network performance management
• Server performance management
• Application performance management
• Virtualization Management
• Mobility Management
• Configuration Management

Having the right people at the right time:

Tools, even the right ones, don’t start delivering value right out of the box.  You need knowledgeable people to set them up, optimize them, keep them running, and sometimes to tell you that you should stop using them.  Having people with the right experiences and knowledge means that you can be innovating and reducing risk at the same time.  We have these people – they are available to you when you need them, for as long as you need them.

Putting the right processes in place:

All the tools in the world won’t help if your processes aren’t optimized.  We’ve seen it all, the good, the not so good and the great.  We can bring all of our experiences to the table and help you identify which processes can be improved and how.

Tools

Empowered lives at the intersection of what IT software management vendors say their products can do, and what you need to have done.  We come from your world, not the vendor world, and we’ve worked on teams just like yours.  Our team combined brings hundreds of years of experience with IT software tools dating back to the early days of the first network management software tools, our experience has grown as IT has evolved. We’ve used, recommended, integrated, implemented and supported software from many vendors who have become our trusted partners in solving customer problems:

Some of the infrastructure management software we’ve recommended to our customers includes:

Virtual Assurance Manager from CA Technologies - a virtual server performance management solution that lets you see all the virtual servers running in the data center and monitor them for faults and performance related issues. We like that it comes as an appliance so installations are simple. A second key benefit is that it requires much less licensing than traditional monitoring tools because agents are only required on a few real servers as opposed to all virtual servers that are being monitored. The graphical interface is really nice and reports can be exported. This product will be of value to customers who want better visibility into their Virtual Server Farm.

eHealth Performance Manager from CA Technologies- a performance management solution that ensures the quality of service across the entire infrastructure. It allows you to manage a diverse collection of devices from numerous vendors, isolates the source of performance degradation, minimizes recurring expenses, and provides detailed & executive level historical reporting. It helps reduce costly downtime, find and fix problems quickly, plan for new capacity before it's needed, improve service quality and meet service levels.

Ionix for IT Operations Intelligence from EMC- a suite of fault management products that discovers and monitors network infrastructure and services for faults.  Problems can be immediately identified to provide maximum uptime for business critical devices and services.  No matter how small or complex the network, modules are available to monitor items such as availability, application and network protocols.  Because the tool discovers topology, it can correlate multiple problems to identify the root cause, allowing the right skilled resources to be assigned to resolve the issue.

Wily APM from CA Technologies - an application performance management solution that analyzes data received from web/java applications on the systems, determines where the performance bottleneck exists and recommends corrective action.  We like that by looking at the services being delivered to end users as opposed to just the elements in the network, CA Wily can report on which users are impacted by poor application performance and what resources should be mobilized to resolve the issue. We see real value in this software for anyone who is running a mission-critical web-based application.

Netuitive - a self-learning analytics engine that supercharges your performance management systems.  It recognizes that managing systems, business services or virtual infrastructures with conventional rule and script-based monitoring tools is humanly impossible. We like how Netuitive replaces the labour-intensive and error-prone manual setting of performance baselines and thresholds with self-learning and continuously adaptive automated mathematics and analysis. We also see how it’s self-learning of your environment’s normal operating characteristics can help forecasts issues before they impact performance, and isolate root causes wherever problems occur which can result in reduced mean time to repair.

Netutive for VMware is a VMware virtual server performance management system that takes the guesswork out of managing virtual environments by discovering all ESX servers, and then continuously analyzes and correlates live streaming data from both physical and virtual resources to forecast performance issues and pinpoint their root causes. With Netuitives certified integration with VMWare’s Virtual Center,  performance management becomes automated, freeing staff to focus on the more complex issues and/or on meeting new performance requirements.

Services

• Tools Audit and Assessment – A review of your current tools to determine if they are a) delivering on their promise, b) redundant and can be removed without impact, c) the best fit for your current and future needs
• 24/7 local support – A support system that duplicates your system in our lab so you can make one phone call any time day or night, when things aren’t working perfectly.
• Health Check – For customers of any of the software products we offer, a no-charge one day on-site assessment of your e-health system conducted by an Empowered expert
• On-site experts - Innovate and reduce your risk at the same time – use our software tools experts to augment your team – when you need them, for only as long as you need them

E4 Methodology

Our E4 methodology is a straightforward, customer-centric framework that will bring you from ground zero to a completely installed and supported solution, or it can be used to solve any part of the process. We use E4 to customize a solution to meet your individual needs.

The four components of E4 are:

Explore – and assess your current environment
Envision – the solution to your problem
Execute – the recommended solution
Enhance – your environment

Explore: Take your first step to improvement by understanding where you are. Our assessments include a professional and unbiased review of your operations, processes and people, to serve as a solid foundation upon which to build recommendations for change. Get a clear sense of where you are today, learn what changes will have the most impact.

Envision: See your way clear to a solution. We make recommendations for hardware, software, processes and skills -- all with one aim -- to ensure you meet your goals. Our recommendations are pragmatic, because we’ve been in your shoes. We understand they must fit within your budget, meet your timing, leverage your team’s strengths, and deliver a positive return on your investment.

Execute: Make the solution real. We know that a major deployment is one of the largest, most expensive and most complex challenges a company can face. We can reduce your risks and maximize your returns. We don’t stop until you say you’re happy. We’ll sell you the right product, install and configure it for maximum application in your environment, train your team on its use, and then support you 24/7 from our Technical Assistance Centre.

Enhance: People make the difference between good and great. We have talent in so many areas and it is available to you. Whether it’s providing EmpoweredCare support on a system we’ve installed for you, or joining your team to solve a particularly challenging problem, or bringing in a specialized skill, we are here for you 24/7. Employ us to eliminate any worry about hiring, firing or dealing with sick leave. We are accountable to you and we’ll make sure there’s never a gap.