Surf’s Up at O’Neill and So Is Its IT Network Thanks to Whatsup Gold

WhatsUp Gold provides O'Neill with powerful discovery, mapping, SNMP and WMI monitoring, alerting, notification and reporting capabilities.

O’Neill required a high-performance network monitoring solution that would enable seamless multi-site infrastructure management, including around-the-clock monitoring of CPU utilization, disk utilization, bandwidth utilization, memory utilization and Ping latency and availability.

Outcome

WhatsUp® Gold has provided O’Neill with powerful discovery, mapping, SNMP and WMI monitoring, alerting, notification and reporting capabilities. It provides 360° visibility, actionable intelligence and complete control of all aspects of its multi-site network.

O’Neill, the original Californian surf, snow and lifestyle brand, was founded in 1952 when a young man named Jack O’Neill took his unstoppable passion for surfing and used it to beat Mother Nature at her own game. Pioneering the world’s first neoprene wetsuit, Jack had successfully found a way to extend his surf sessions in the bone-chilling breaks of Northern California. He opened up the garage doors to his first surf shop in Santa Cruz soon after.

While many things have changed since those humble beginnings, Jack’s initial vision of producing functional and innovative boardriding products continues to lie at the core of everything the company does. O’Neill’s set of core values – innovation in style and technology – has seen the brand devote itself wholeheartedly to the evolution of action sports. From the first ever neoprene wetsuit and surf leash, to the world’s first stitchless boardshorts and range of ground- breaking wearable electronics, O’Neill’s spirit of innovation will always drive the company forward.

Today, O’Neill can be found all over the world. In touch with itrich heritage and the universal stoke of boardriding culture, O’Neill will always be committed to progressing that evolution and growing its reputation as one of the world’s leading youth lifestyle brands.

“Our core vision as a company is to produce functional and innovative products and this ethos extends to all our purchase decisions too,” explains O’Neill Global IT Service and Infrastructure Manager, Peter Maljaars. “When I was looking to upgrade our network management solution I wanted one that had all the functionality I needed now, yet was future-proofed for any additions to our current network.”

The Search for an Optimum Solution

Headquartered in Warmond, the Netherlands, O’Neill Europe is a privately held company with 160 employees. As well as the company’s European HQ in the Netherlands, O’Neill has four further sites spread across Western Europe. It found that its existing solution – OpManager from AdventNet – wasn’t able to scale up to monitor these sites.

O’Neill did its homework and found that organizations with multiple sites and inter-connecting networks spanning geographies were forced to compromise, as they have been limited to two very different choices for network management and monitoring. These were either multiple installations of disconnected single-site solutions at each physical location or large and expensive solutions that require a significant additional investment in implementation, configuration and training.

“We came to the conclusion that neither choice represented an optimal solution that addressed both total cost of ownership (TCO) and seamless multi-site infrastructure management,” says Maljaars. “We needed a high-performance solution that would enable us to manage all our sites simultaneously while also allowing us to report on each one separately.”

A Solution to Manage Complex Multi-Site Networks

Designed expressly for organizations such as O’Neill that have complex multi-site networks, WhatsUp Gold Distributed Edition is a comprehensive and cost-effective enterprise network management and application monitoring solution. Built upon the award-winning WhatsUp Gold core architecture, WhatsUp Gold Distributed is a fully-featured network management and application monitoring solution purposely designed to handle complex geographically dispersed multi-site networks.

“WhatsUp Gold is proven solution with powerful discovery, mapping, SNMP and WMI monitoring, alerting, notification and reporting capabilities,” enthused Maljaars. “WhatsUp Gold provides us with 360° visibility into, actionable intelligence about and complete control of all aspects of our multi-site network.”

Faster Response Time to Anticipate Issues Maintains Productivity by Keeping Users Online Longer O’Neill utilizes the performance monitors in WhatsUp Gold to gather important information about the devices running on its network, then uses it to create reports trending the utilization and availability of different aspects of those devices. “I look at CPU utilization, disk utilization, bandwidth utilization, memory utilization and Ping latency and availability,” adds Maljaars. “This enables us to better understand our network and be proactive to any potential problems rather than waiting for the phone to ring from irate employees wanting to know why they can’t undertake their job effectively due to a problem on the network meaning they can’t access the Internet or receive any emails.”

“WhatsUp Gold Distributed Edition provides O’Neill with a flexible solution that enables it to reliably and securely manage its network across all its sites. It delivers the visibility, intelligence and control of the network it desired within a single scalable solution at the lowest possible TCO,” adds Ipswitch Regional Sales Manager, Mike Silva. “WhatsUp Gold is highly scalable and able to grow with O’Neill’s business; meaning it will continue to see a return on its investment and deliver the innovation and passion its customers identify for many years to come.”