becom Informatiesystemen

VISUAL Control Center

becom Informatiesystemen provides effective and profitable IT solutions to over 2.000 active customers in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. becom supplies the right solution, measured against optimum business results.
becom delivers a high quality of service to companies who consider their IT infrastructure to be a critical factor of success, and also as the foundation that enables them to meet their objectives.

Tango/04 software helps becom to provide high performance outsourced iSeries power

becom is one of the largest first-tier IBM Business Partners in the Netherlands, providing integrated, cross-platform IT solutions to customers throughout the Benelux region. With an existing customer base of over two thousand companies, becom is not only a well known eServer specialist in its market, but also one that faces the challenge of offering increasingly innovative solutions to large corporations operating throughout Europe in order to retain its leadership position.

"Tango/04 VISUAL Control Center provides becom with historical reporting, real-time monitoring and trend analysis to ensure SLAs are continuously met"

This was the reason why becom developed an innovative outsourcing formula for customers who require high processing power but prefer not to invest in the acquisition of hardware. What makes becom's offer different from most outsourcing models is that they don't just provide a package of manpower and managed applications, as typical ASPs would. Instead, becom directly leases its servers' computing power to customers by means of a monthly fee, leaving the management of their applications in their hands. On its side, becom commits to a strict SLA and is responsible for anticipating and conducting any upgrade needed to meet the SLA at no additional cost during the full length of the contract, which is typically of three years.

The problem

Fast-growing companies such as Foot Locker Europe, the first customer of becom who works under this model, benefit from the ability to finance their IT investment over time, while ensuring they always get the highest level of performance, regardless of usage increases and peaks. But they also demand clear and feasible proof that the service levels are being met.

This is why becom made contact with PST Business Solutions BV, one of the premiere Business Partners of Tango/04 Computing Group. becom's concern was simple: in order to provide the appropriate quality of service, they needed a software solution to generate iSeries performance metrics in the past, present and future.
As Denis Wolf, Sales Manager at PST Business Solutions explains, “becom needed historical performance reporting to demonstrate the accomplishment of SLAs, real-time system monitoring to prevent or solve problems, and capacity planning tools to foresee required hardware improvements needed to meet their commitments.”

The solution

“The answer was Tango/04 VISUAL Control Center, a suite of iSeries performance management products that includes VISUAL Control for Windows the industry's most complete real-time performance monitoring console, with outstanding alert and reporting capabilities and VISUAL Control Performance Planner a capacity planning solution with trend analysis and scenario-planning capabilities. During normal workdays, operators at becom supervise the system's performance in an unattended manner. When a problem occurs they get alerted by an E-Mail sent by the VISUAL Control for Windows console. From here, they can drill-down at any of the graphical performance meters to identify an abusive job, an abusive user or an interactive error causing the system to fall below acceptable levels. They can even take control of a user's session to solve the problem, using the VISUAL Support Pro add-on, and resume normal operations remotely as soon as the problem is solved,” Wolf explains.

These performance measurement and alerting capabilities help becom stay confident they are delivering the needed quality of service, but as every month comes to an end, it is time to demonstrate the results to their customers. That is when the Reporting System module, fully integrated in the solution along with over 50 predefined report templates, comes into action. Using a user-friendly wizard interface, becom client executives can generate reports of CPU usage, response times, and applications availability, among many other variables, that are then put together and sent to customers along with the monthly fee invoice.

Finally, as system usage grows, becom utilizes VISUAL Control Performance Planner to conduct trend analyses and anticipate the system upgrades needed to maintain the service level. “This way becom can predict months in advance that disk space must be increased or processing power must be added in order to cope with their customers' needs. They can plan their investments and ensure high performance levels throughout the year”, Wolf says.

The deployment of Tango/04 VISUAL Control Center at an installation that provides services through a monthly fee also required a creative and flexible formula for the software to be purchased. Tango/04 allowed PST to provide the software on a leasing basis, so the software is also being paid in monthly installments by means of a special ASP-oriented pricing and leasing policy.

“We were able to provide becom with the same flexibility in pricing as we did with the functionality of the software,” Wolf says. “This way we and Tango/04 are enabling applications service providers to deliver measurable business results to their customers that demonstrate the best value not only once, but again and again every month.”

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