Nexthink increases the quality of IT services
Customer‘s profile
Východoslovenská energetika Holding a.s. (VSEH) manages its subsidiaries, which are involved in the distribution of electricity, and the supply of electricity and natural gas. At the same time, it provides its subsidiaries with various shared services. The company manages more than 600 thousand offtake points and nearly 21,000 kilometres of networks. Services for 580 thousand customers are provided by 1,500 employees through 11 contact points.
Management summary
Unique proactive Nexthink monitoring for a thousand IT end devices and dozens of VSEH servers has brought about the expected positive effects. The quality of IT services has increased, while the number and duration of downtimes has decreased. The causes of incidents can be identified more easily, the response time is faster, and the solution time is shorter. All the above-mentioned improvements have led to a better customer experience, which does not show in economic indicators, but it has an important positive reputational impact.
Initial status
Prior to the deployment of the Nexthink proactive monitoring, the IT operation at VSEH worked in standard reactive mode. Information on the infrastructure and what was happening within it was not sufficient. A precise inventory of software components was missing. Response to incidents required time-demanding analysis by experienced administrators. Component failures caused data loss. The IT management was aware that increasing the quality of IT services that are an important part of the company’s business processes and customer satisfaction is only possible through a proactive approach and improved infrastructure information.
Goals and requirements
The primary goal of the customer was to reduce the number of end device failures, as well as to speed up the response time and shorten the solution time in the event of an incident. It was important for the customer to protect and recover user data by eliminating hard disk failures. These objectives were to be achieved at neutral total costs, so the deployment of the solution should be compensated by staff labour demand.
Proactive IT monitoring from the perspective of Nexthink end devices attracted specialists at VSEH by being different to the existing solutions on the market. The advantage was the quick installation in the environment, first data acquisition after only a few days, and minimal entry costs, as the whole solution can also be obtained in the form of a managed service.
Solution
The production operation of the Nexthink end device monitoring was preceded by a month-long pilot operation. Its positives were so persuasive that management decided to deploy it into production operation. Backend infrastructure implementation of the Nexthink product took approximately 2 business days, during which Nexthink Engine and Nexthink Portal were installed and configured, and an installation procedure was developed for the Nexthink Collector (agent) installation on 1,000 desktops and 35 servers in the VSEH environment. The distribution of agents was provided by VSEH using its deployment tool.
Because Nexthink was completely installed into the VSEH environment during pilot operation, only minor configuration adjustments had to be made after switching to production operation. During the following year, some customer views were adjusted but otherwise the Nexthink system was “maintenance-free”.
Results and benefits
Increasing quality without increasing costs.
The more complicated and complex the system, the more important the satisfaction of its users, the greater the significance of its seamless operation. Nexthink allows IT administrators at VSEH to better respond to potential deviations from the required quality of the provided business services. It’s possible to pro-actively avoid downtimes and decrease the number of incidents. Potential operating problems can be resolved faster, thanks to better information about their causes.
Along with a thorough hardware inventory and an accurate software inventory, Nexthink provides better control over IT and cost optimization. Nexthink is helpful in collecting versions of various software, reveals which application section causes connectivity issues, and helps to identify communication problems. The labour intensity in terms of service management and reporting has decreased.
Quotation
“Nexthink represents the other side of the coin compared to backend infrastructure monitoring. It saves time and improves user experience. It’s not about the money; it’s the added value of IT operation quality. We recommend it as a managed service,” said Tomáš Nalevanko, IT Servicedesk and IT Trainings Manager.
Main benefits of the solution
The uniqueness of Nexthink is that it monitors IT from the perspective of end devices. All important events, such as IT infrastructure changes, application usage, bandwidth, error messages and malfunctions, as well as potential security risks and IT service implementation, are recorded and displayed from the end-user’s perspective. This brings new quality into the administration of the IT environment.