“Our Network Watch service is the result of feedback from our clients who have expressed a requirement for remote monitoring on their Nortel and other manufacturers products,“ explains Michael Lloyd, Managing Director of The Unified Group, “Unified Group believes in offering our customers the most pro-active support services possible and with convergence of voice and data on the same network becoming increasingly common, trying to track down and rectify a problem is increasingly difficult as technical staff need knowledge within the areas of voice, data, applications and the underlying network infrastructure.”
“For many organisations, it is not cost effective to employ specialist support staff in house – especially out of normal business hours - and this is where Network Watch service offers an inexpensive and highly flexible solution.”
Network Watch is available as a managed service and utilises an onsite portal device with connection to the full range of Nortel Switches including the Meridian, CS1000 and new BCM voice products as well as the Nortel Passport range of data switches. The Portal also monitors any IP based devices connected to the Ethernet network via SNMP and active response techniques with historical data recording to help with troubleshooting.
The 2U rack mounted Network Watch Portal communicates back to the Network Watch Network Operation Centre in Aldermaston via a DSL connection.
Unified looked at a number of different applications which offered a combination of data, voice and application monitoring capability but as Lloyd explains, “None matched our requirements or provided enough flexibility to tailor the system to the needs of our various clients. Also, to avoid having to pass on an additional licensing cost to our clients, we developed the Network Watch service with our own in-house team of Linux developers and Nortel experts.”
“Our initial offering is targeted at Nortel voice and data customers but the flexibility of the Network Watch service allows us to also monitor other network attached devices like switches and applications such as email or web servers.”
“The Network Watch service is extremely flexible and based entirely on customer requirement which can range from simple notification of an incident to the relevant IT manager escalating right up to 4 hour onsite emergency response.” Lloyd concludes.
Network Watch Service is available now.