Illovo Sugar Limited, SA`s leading sugar producing and exporting companies, has taken steps to enhance the management and monitoring of its information technology infrastructure in a bid to more accurately plan for future business investments.
The company has deployed a locally developed enterprise monitoring solution, designed by PM Tech Holdings and implemented by its application and integration outsourcing partner, InfoWave Holdings Limited.
PM Tech`s software solution, Enterprise Gauge, is designed to proactively acquire server, database and application statistics on Illovo`s 17 distributed sites nationally and across Africa - comprising 57 servers and 65 databases.
"We needed to understand the load patterns and data dynamics associated with our servers and fully comprehend possible problem areas before we invested in new technologies," comments Dave Schaller, general manager, IT at Illovo Sugar.
Says Bruno Lionnet, a director at InfoWave Holding Limited: "Enterprise Gauge offered us ease-of-implementation and use. Importantly, the tool`s architecture and design allows for remote and central monitoring without impacting network performance."
He adds that Enterprise Gauge enables InfoWave to effectively provide Illovo IT with monthly management reports on key performance areas such as CPU, memory and disk utilisation, capacity planning, database and operating system (OS) bottlenecks and OS management.
The company primarily focuses on Illovo`s Oracle databases, Unix OSs and an integrated suite of applications called "Tranquillity" - developed and maintained by InfoWave - which comprises finance, human resources and other sugar industry specific modules.
Another key differentiator was PM Tech`s flexible pricing structure, which is rand-based as well as easy accessibility to the company`s key technical support personnel.
"Since deploying Enterprise Gauge at our sites in SA and Africa we`ve been able to realise what we set out to do - obtain statistics on every server, database and application, which in turn helps us proactively focus on problem solving," comments Schaller.
The success of Enterprise Gauge has also resulted in the product being extended to include Illovo`s Microsoft NT4 servers, networks and desktops - run by the company`s infrastructure and desktop outsourcing partner, Bytes Technology Networks, a division of JSE-listed Bytes Technology Group.
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