NetCologne secures IT services centrally

NetCologne is one of the leading regional telecommunications providers in Germany. With around 420,000 landline connections, 200,000 broadband customers, 250,000 TV customers and its own fiber optic network of over 28,000 kilometers, the company operates one of the most modern infrastructures in Europe.

This technical basis requires highly available, professional IT and service monitoring. Because behind the reliable supply of Internet, telephony, TV and mobile communications are complex IT structures with more than 600 servers and over 12,000 network elements that have to be centrally controlled, monitored and secured.

NetCologne's Group IT was confronted with constantly increasing requirements: The heterogeneous system landscape with numerous databases, applications, networks and services needed to be monitored transparently, scalably and in a future-proof manner - in an integrated system.

The company was looking for a holistic monitoring solution that not only ensures technical availability across all platforms, but also makes service level agreements visible, detects failures at an early stage and automatically forwards alerts to the right places. Furthermore, the integration of additional functions such as dashboards, SLA visualization and alarm management was a central component of the requirement.

The aim was to obtain both a technical and an operational view of the entire IT and business service landscape - for greater transparency, faster response times and consistently high service quality for end customers.

Integrated monitoring platform with a 360° view

After an intensive selection process, NetCologne opted for an integrated, modular monitoring solution from USU. The aim was to establish a central platform that would control all systems, networks and services across the board - including business services, service levels and alarm management.

As a central "data collector", the new system was to consolidate all information and visualize it clearly via a modern dashboard. USU impressed with its extensive functionality, high integration capability and flexibility for customer-specific adaptations. The German-language support and the option of integrating individual extensions were also decisive factors.

Functions such as anomaly detection, service level monitoring and reporting complement the 360° monitoring and make the solution future-proof. The large number of successful USU reference projects also underlined the performance of the solution.

As part of the multi-stage project process, a test system was first set up - including all the necessary interfaces and a graphical visualization of the monitored data. In successive tests, the system was successively improved, adapted to the requirements and finally successfully put into production.

Successful implementation in four steps:

• Setting up the 360° monitoring system on the test server
• Data import from the previous system and development of all interfaces
• Training and go-live after successful test run
• Creation of seamless reporting - including 365-day data review
• Integration of additional modules for service level agreements and alarm management

360° monitoring for full transparency and faster response times

NetCologne achieved its goal: a central monitoring solution that maps all network and infrastructure components in one system and provides usable information for operations. USU's 360° monitoring provides a transparent, organization-wide view of the entire business-critical IT and business landscape.

 

A multi-client-capable dashboard visualizes the availability of all systems in real time - from both a technical and operational perspective. This enables technicians and on-call teams to react more quickly and in a more targeted manner to disruptions.

 

The benefits at a glance:

• Transparent monitoring of all systems, platforms and applications
• Fast fault diagnosis and rectification - across team and system boundaries
• Increased productivity thanks to automated processes and shorter downtimes
• Measurable service quality through continuous monitoring of SLAs
• Improved performance for end customers thanks to optimized service standards