Paessler PRTG is the perfect response to arvato’s desire to simplify & unify monitoring

About arvato

As a true consulting force, arvato develops marketing strategies and tailor-made solutions for smoother, richer, and more human relationships between brands and consumers. Their teams of industry experts (CRM, SCM, digital marketing, financial services) are supported by industry and operational specialists to provide brands with the most effective customer marketing solutions.

arvato is part of Bertelsmann, Europe's leading media and services group. Present in 40 countries, including 22 in Europe, arvato employs 70,000 people worldwide and generated sales of 4.8 billion euros in 2015, including 408 million euros in France.

arvato called on integrator By The Way in July 2015 to install Paessler PRTG Network Monitor with over 14,000 PRTG sensors to monitor the entire system part of its IT infrastructure. Satisfied with PRTG's performance to date, arvato decided to entrust it with the supervision of the rest of its infrastructure, namely the network and application parts.

"PRTG was the perfect response to our desire to simplify and unify monitoring, making everything much more fluid and efficient,” continues Cyril Jouan. “Today, we've divided the number of servers dedicated to monitoring by 5, and we're saving money thanks to consolidation and the fact that we only have one monitoring tool."

Cyril Jouan, IT Engineer, Shared Services Center at arvato

Monitoring with PRTG: Facts & figures

In figures, PRTG monitoring for arvato means :

Only 3 weeks' installation (instead of several months)
850 servers, 450 network devices & 250 databases monitored
14,000 sensors installed
5 minutes to add a sensor (instead of 1 hour)
20 minutes for 1 update (instead of a minimum of one day)
Immediate ROI: savings of tens of thousands of euros

Comprehensive and simplified IT infrastructure monitoring

"At By The Way, we've had an exclusive approach to recommending solutions for 15 years: we benchmark market offerings on a regular basis, and above all, we base our research on our customers' needs and their feedback," explains Nicolas Mazurier, CEO of By The Way.

"When arvato contacted us about their monitoring needs, we recommended PRTG, for which we have 4 Paessler certifications, and which has received 100% satisfaction from our 40 customers using the solution. The Proof of Concept (POC) we carried out in July 2015 bore fruit, enabling us to finalize the installation and make it operational in September 2015."

The benefits of using PRTG: savings, simplification, and efficiency

arvato now benefits from a single tool for all its network monitoring. This makes administration much simpler than using multiple open-source solutions. Today, the entire system infrastructure is monitored, which means 850 servers, 450 network devices, and 250 databases, or some 15,000 sensors installed for monitoring purposes.

After 4 months in production, the monitoring tool has proved its stability, and there are no longer any service interruptions. Previously, IT teams were frequently called upon, and the development of open-source tools took up too much of their time, preventing them from concentrating on more essential tasks. Indeed, when Cyril Jouan's staff wanted to add a server, they had to take 1 hour of their time to do so. Today, with PRTG, it only takes 5 minutes. Similarly, an application update used to take at least 1 day; now it only takes 15 to 20 minutes.

"PRTG was the perfect response to our desire to simplify and unify monitoring, making everything much more fluid and efficient," continues Cyril Jouan. "Today, we've divided the number of servers dedicated to monitoring by 5, and we're saving money thanks to consolidation and the fact that we only have one monitoring tool."

The results of the first installation phase are very positive. By The Way's support and the nature of PRTG itself enabled integration to be completed in just 3 weeks, compared with the usual months. arvato saw the ROI of using PRTG almost immediately. In terms of price, a network monitoring solution usually costs around a hundred thousand euros. With PRTG, it's just a few tens of thousands of euros: a significant saving.

Conclusion

To date, arvato uses PRTG for the system part of its infrastructure but has already decided to continue working with By The Way to integrate PRTG for the network and application layers. This means that several thousand additional sensors will be installed.

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