Helping IT perform smoothly and efficiently

Understanding and controlling your IT infrastructure’s performance is critical for today’s globally focused organisations. With information increasingly shared between dispersed users and locations, it’s difficult to achieve full visibility and control of multiple complex and fragmented processes.

Our suite of performance management services provides ongoing monitoring and optimisation of your business-critical infrastructure – helping you eradicate inefficiencies and reconfigure systems for optimal business efficiency.

Effectively manage complex architectures

The Application Assured Infrastructure (AAI) Continuous Performance Management service provides you with the critical overview you need to optimise application performance – helping you meet the challenge of effectively managing complex enterprise architectures.

Our platform and network supplier independent service can help you:
Ensure critical application performance: through minimising application downtime and prioritising business-critical applications.

Set application policies: enabling you to pre-define application performance for optimal business benefit, even during times of network congestion or change.

Gain a detailed overview of your entire application environment, including:

• Top applications, servers, workstations, devices, conversations and links.
• Bandwidth resources allocated to mission-critical applications.
• Who or what is consuming bandwidth.
• Identification of non-business-critical applications that impact overall performance.

This enables you to:
Meet service levels to your end users

• Ensure that applications meet service levels for performance.
• Define application performance for user groups and locations.

Monitor specific application environments performance, including:

• Web and online experience.
• Citrix, Financial Information eXchange (FIX)
• Databases

Proactively troubleshoot and reduce downtime through:

• Isolating fault area: client, network or server.
• Assigning responsibility to correct IT domain.
• Charge back
• Understanding usage, locations, functions use of applications
• Assessing page load times, page design issues and isolating causes
• Monitoring database queries

Giving you vision and control of applications

The Continuous Performance Management (CPM) service is available globally and suitable for any IP-based infrastructure, including Frame Relay, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and multi-protocol label switching (MPLS).

We provide three ongoing services:

• Applications landscape monitoring: Ongoing discovery and monitoring of all applications.
• Applications performance monitoring: Granular application performance data relating to user, server, network and backend databases.
• Applications optimisation: Application control, acceleration and compression.

With the CPM suite of services you will benefit from:

• 24/7 insight into what is happening on your infrastructure – giving you the visibility to monitor interactions between users, applications, servers and devices.
• Greater control of the applications environment – helping you optimise business-critical applications and bandwidth use.
• Online dashboard reporting – providing a simple, realtime interface to help inform your IT decision-making.
• Dedicated analysts and consultants – giving you access to our unparalleled network, applications and infrastructure expertise.

CPM service deliverables include:

• Performance monitoring helpdesk.
• Individual monthly analysis reporting.
• Near-time and historical reporting via online dashboard.

You can also benefit from additional services, including:

• Incident investigation, alarming and fault diagnosis.
• End-to-end application service level agreements (SLAs) from the desktop to the data centre.

Helping you make intelligent, informed decisions

We understand that to get the best out of your infrastructure, you need to know exactly what events and interactions are occurring at any given time. Our suite of Continuous Performance Management services gives you the essential intelligence to make informed decisions and reduce the complexity of managing enterprise architectures.

Applications Landscape Monitoring
An ongoing service that delivers the visibility you need to confidently assess capacity management and performance problems through:

• Identifying who or what is using your bandwidth.
• Illustrating if and how any non-business-critical applications are impacting performance.
• Delivering the accurate intelligence needed to justify upgrades.

Applications Performance Monitoring
Enables you to monitor, at a granular level, how any given application is performing and will help you:
Meet service levels to your end users

• Understand whether your applications are meeting their service levels for performance.
• Monitor how applications are performing for particular user groups and in different locations.

Assess the performance of specific application environments, including:

Enterprise Applications

• SAP, Microsoft 
• Databases
• Specific applications eg, Citrix, FIX

Web environment

• XML

Applications Optimisation
Places the focus on applications, not the network and enables you to improve your control of critical applications using global optimisation policies. This can help you to accurately define criticality and bandwidth for individual applications through:

• Determining the performance required by an application for a good user experience.
• Dynamically tuning your existing network for optimal performance.
• Working collaboratively and ensuring key applications always achieve the required performance.
• Protecting key application performance at congestion peaks.
• Protecting the performance of “bursty” applications with constantly changing data flows, such as Citrix.
  

Gain a detailed view of exactly what is going on

Our AAI Continuous Performance Management services can provide you with the detailed view you need to effectively control infrastructure performance.

Applications Landscape Monitoring
The service benefits from a comprehensive management wrap, delivering:

• Online dashboard, available via the Global Services portal, to help simplify control.
• Access to specialist AAI analysts and a monthly report and recommendations.
• Dedicated helpdesk with 24/7 support.
• Incident investigation capabilities.

Management summary and drill down, delivering:

• Top level summary of key applications.
• Top applications by volume.
• Response times, illustrating per user, per device, per server information.
• Individual website information.

Historical analysis:

• Indicates trending over time.
• Helps you forecast bandwidth capacity issues.
• Enables you to assess the impact of changes on volume, for example rollout of Microsoft Exchange environment.

Realtime capabilities:

• Monitor top applications by the second.
• Identify non-business-critical applications.
• Locations view, identify bandwidth use at different sites.

Planning for change:

• Identify exactly what applications you have.
• Assess the impact of non-business-critical applications on other vital applications.
• Provide a benchmark for new application rollout, IT changes or server consolidation.
• Ensure your infrastructure is ready for change.

Applications Performance Monitoring
Provides you with the information you need to accurately assess how any given application is performing and monitor multiple environments, including enterprise application and web environments.

Proactive troubleshooting to reduce downtime

• Simply and accurately isolate area of fault, whether it’s client, network or server based.
• Assign responsibility to correct IT Domain
• Charge back

Management Summary and drill down

• Top level information of key applications and network performance.
• Granular detail, per user, per device, per server reporting.

Historical analysis

• Trending over time.
• Helps you forecast bandwidth capacity issues.
• Assess impact of IT changes.

Realtime capabilities

• Locations view – assess performance at individual sites.
• Top applications performance by the second.
• Identification of non-business-critical applications.

Management Wrap:

• Online dashboard access to analysts and 24/7 helpdesk.
• Realtime and historical proactive alarming.
• Incident investigation.
• Customised reports.

Applications Optimisation
Helps you establish global optimisation policies to control applications and achieve the desired service level. This element of the service enables you to define criticality and bandwidth for individual applications to match performance expectations through:

• Establishing application policies – ensure that your critical applications perform how they need to, even during times of congestion or change.
• Preventing or delaying the need for bandwidth upgrades, especially where congestion is short-term.
• Employing wide area network (WAN) optimisation techniques as part of the service.
• Continuous monitoring of application performance and alerts based on realtime, periodic, global and local views.
• Enabling you to deliberately limit quality of service (QoS) for less critical applications, or rapidly block viruses or denial of service attacks across an entire network.
• Minimising the risk of introducing new applications to your WAN.
• Providing a key enabler for application service level agreements (SLAs).

The management wrap includes:

• Online dashboard, access to analysts and 24/7 helpdesk.
• Managed policy changes.
• Realtime applications performance data.
• Real-time trip (RTT), Packet loss, delay and jitter data.
• Historical reports and right-sizing information.
• Incident investigation.

Optimising business performance and infrastructure management

Whatever sector you operate in, a clear view of an optimised infrastructure can help you gain competitive advantage, enhance organisational responsiveness and prepare for a future of converged communications.

From a CEO perspective, AAI Continuous Performance Management can help you improve your supply chain management efficiency and put a stop to the “blame game” surrounding infrastructure performance issues. It can also help you avoid the potentially staggering cost of system downtime – which depending on the industry can run to up to £2.5 million per hour.

For IT directors, we can help you make a solid case for IT spend, based on the informed decision making delivered by our comprehensive monitoring capabilities. We can also help your Applications Manager to improve the success rate of new application rollouts. And finally, Network Managers can benefit from hard facts with which to make the investment case for network spend.

Bringing you production-engineered capabilities

The Application Assured Infrastructure capabilities that underpin our Continuous Performance Management services are production engineered to deliver high-quality results. They will help you achieve the infrastructure and applications optimisation you need to enhance competitiveness at a lower cost than a “do-it-yourself” approach.

We have an outstanding record of delivering value to clients. More than 250 specific AAI engagements have been carried out for more than 220 customers across the globe, and our service is currently being taken up by 12 more customers a month.

Our highly scalable and repeatable methodologies are supported by more than 200 AAI specialists, application analysts and a dedicated helpdesk. They have a deep cross-sectoral understanding of how networks, applications, servers and users interact with business processes.

We bring together market-leading tools to create a modular range of tailored service packages. This helps ensure we can deliver a comprehensive managed service capable of achieving immediate results and helping you prepare for the future with confidence.