Taiwan-based KHS is one of the world's largest manufacturers of musical instruments with popular brands like Walden Guitars and Mapex Drums. The company's five business subsidiaries used to operate independently, each with its own IT team. KHS decided to centralize all IT operations at its headquarters which led to sorting out system integration and network troubleshooting. This major IT initiative included a data center virtualization project to standardize all Point of Sale (PoS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
Closing the Door on Open Source
KHS had been using OpenNMS network management software. But the IT team needed something better to improve productivity and efficiency within the new PoS and ERP application environment.
OpenNMS provided little insight on the root causes of IT problems. Configuration and management of an open-source product was too difficult and time consuming. KHS had to rely on staff members' experience to determine if problems were network, server or application related. Network troubleshooting was very complicated.
"To meet the company's goals to double profits and production with existing staff, we needed an IT monitoring solution that was easier to install and use." - Peter Tsao, Manager of Systems Operations at KHS
Network Troubleshooting and Monitoring Requirements and Results
The IT team's three most important criteria for their network monitoring product included:
- The ability to support more than 90% of all internal systems, including servers and applications
- An intuitive management interface that was easy to configure and operate
- A low total cost of ownership, including future maintenance and support
KHS determined that WhatsUp Gold network monitoring software not only met but exceeded all three needs. The team installed WhatsUp Gold along with application performance monitoring, configuration management and virtualization monitoring add-ons. This allowed them to monitor the IT infrastructure at the corporate data center and across its subsidiaries.
"We can easily see poor application performance, storage capacity shortages and network bottlenecks using WhatsUp Gold dashboards. Troubleshooting now takes 80% less time. This lets my team spend more time on higher priority work like project implementation or process improvement." – Peter Tsao, KHS
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The results from the WhatsUp Gold implementation have exceeded expectations, and they include:
- Time spent network troubleshooting and identifying the root cause reduced by 80% (worth mentioning twice)
- Solving in-store problems that affects customer service now happens in 30 minutes or less
- Network configuration changes are managed more effectively
- System and website monitoring for online shops solves problems faster to maintain their reputation and retain customers
See firsthand if WhatsUp Gold can free up time for your IT team with a free 30-day trial.