A Global Life Sciences Testing Provider's Journey from Distrust to Delight
Industries:
Life SciencesProducts:
WhatsUp GoldChallenge
After working with SolarWinds, the organization sought a more streamlined, affordable network monitoring solution.
Solution
- Engage with the WhatsUp Gold Professional Services team to assist implementing a more straightforward network monitoring solution.
- Configure WhatsUp Gold to monitor over 100 servers, lab instruments and cover resources, disk space, URL monitoring and Windows services.
- Utilize the WhatsUp Gold dashboard to obtain a consolidated view of their network assets.
Result
- Deployed a solution that aligned with their business goals, while still being affordable and easy-to-use.
- Maintained a stable and secure monitoring environment that doesn’t require additional attention.
- Obtained a clear and robust view of their systems and infrastructure via the WhatsUp Gold dashboard.
Full Story
Challenge
A Global Life Sciences Testing Provider offers a robust testing environment for companies in the life sciences sector to evaluate their products. Since they assist major pharmaceutical and consumer product companies during a crucial stage, the company needs to adhere to strict regulatory standards. So, they need a top-notch IT infrastructure monitoring platform to maintain operations.
The systems administrators were using an open-source network monitoring tool to analyze the health of its numerous network assets, including 100+ servers, lab instruments and more. Seeking a more modern IT monitoring solution, they began using SolarWinds, an organization they were already familiar with, as they were using a ticketing system from them, and its Self-Hosted Observability product.
But, the results of this turned out to be less than stellar. It was a pricey product that wasn’t doing what the IT team expected. Their system administrators were unable to monitor Windows services, despite what was discussed earlier with the vendor. The complexity led to the team missing network alerts, such as connectivity issues, which led to IT’s reputation within the organization becoming damaged.
“The SolarWinds deployment was a nightmare,” recalled their Senior Systems Administrator. “We just wanted some basic monitoring, but almost every monitor was broken or they just weren’t working. Worst of all, we weren’t receiving any notifications and it became a constant fight.”
Despite this, the team picked themselves up and sought out a new solution.
The SolarWinds deployment was a nightmare. We just wanted some basic monitoring, but almost every monitor was broken or they just weren’t working. Worst of all, we weren’t receiving any notifications and it became a constant fight.
Senior Systems Administrator
Global Life Sciences Testing Provider
Solution
The Global Life Sciences Testing Provider partnered with Progress Professional Services to help implement a robust, but easy-to-use network monitoring solution. It was during these initial conversations when the Senior Systems Administrator became aware of Progress WhatsUp Gold monitoring capabilities.
Before deploying, the Progress Professional Services team provided the Senior Systems Administrator and his team with hands-on support, not just with deployment. The Professional Services team had guided the provider with setting up the solution and how to use it for day-to-day tasks, such as expert knowledge transfers.
The team were able to configure their WhatsUp Gold solution to monitor 300 systems across their infrastructure, which includes servers and lab instruments. Directly out of the box, WhatsUp Gold provided the capabilities they were missing from SolarWinds. They also gained additional capabilities, such as easily being able to monitor any Windows service or URL.
Another WhatsUp Gold feature that stood out to the team was its dashboard. Since they had numerous assets, it was challenging to monitor all of them. The dashboard provided his team with the ability to analyze all the devices connected to their network in a consolidated view.
Result
The Global Life Sciences Testing Provider found the transition to the WhatsUp Gold solution to be seamless. A big part of that came from their experience with the Professional Services team, who their Senior Systems Engineer felt gave extra time and effort to help set up their systems administrators succeed.
And as a result, the life sciences company now has a stable and secure network monitoring environment that aligns with its needs. The team are enabled to conduct all monitoring in a single spot. The WhatsUp Gold dashboard proved to be the most beneficial for their Senior Systems Administrator. While being able to see the status of the servers is helpful, the team can easily pull up the status of a device, see what’s going on and proceed to go on with their workday. The intuitive dashboard frees them up to do so.
What’s next for the team? They are eager to start using the other monitoring capabilities offered by the WhatsUp Gold solution. But, in the meantime, the team is satisfied with what the WhatsUp Gold network monitoring provides them with. The provider's Senior Systems Administrator summed up his company’s experience with the product in one sentence: “In hindsight, WhatsUp Gold is doing great, I wish we deployed it in the first place.”
I haven’t really had to think about the deployment that much since implementing, which is great. The dashboard is very good. You can go in and see everything at once.
Senior Systems Administrator
Global Life Sciences Testing Provider