EDS, a world leader in IT services and outsourcing, relies on strictly best-of-breed technologies to offer its clientele maximum uptime for hosted services, processing power, networks and data storage. Locally EDS South Africa is the outsource partner of many market-leading companies in the financial services, manufacturing, mining and energy sectors.
EDS South Africa uses the industry-standard Computer Associates Unicenter software suite for monitoring its complex and expansive network of IT devices. CA Unicenter allows EDS to monitor at a granular level the performance of individual servers and software applications as well as fluctuations in data flow throughout the network fabric.
For despatching business-critical alerts and system status messages to support staff EDS relies on CellSys, an enterprise-class mission critical messaging system from SMS Cellular Services. CellSys is seamlessly integrated into the functions of the CA Unicenter helpdesk where faults messages are reported.
This allows SMS alerts, containing details of the fault report, to be immediately despatched to the relevant technicians to be acted upon. Where EDS has service level agreements (SLAs) with enterprise hardware vendors the SMS messages are despatched directly to the relevant on-call support staff. For some, high-availability critical hardware messages are routed directly through CellSys, bypassing the helpdesk altogether.
"CellSys is a mature product which has been proven in the high-demands environment of the biggest corporate data centres, and it integrates easily into industry-leading monitoring products such as the CA Unicenter," explains Barry Prinsloo, sales director SMS Cellular Services.
According to Hannes Botes, IT consultant at EDS South Africa, the company is bound by extremely stringent SLAs, some of which allow just 15 minutes' turnaround time to resolve technical problems. This makes the speed and reliability of message delivery a critical factor in EDS's service offering.
"We have been using CellSys for four years because it has some unique advantages. We received a higher level of service guarantee from CellSys than from any similar product, and we could translate these guarantees into service level agreements with our clients," explains Botes. "The CellSys system would also confirm whether the message was received, or whether the recipient had his phone switched off or was otherwise unreachable by SMS."
Recently EDS has built further reliability and redundancy into its CellSys solution. The Web-based IP-to-IP message pipeline which served EDS for three years has recently been upgraded to a direct leased-line directly into the CellSys messaging hub, where messages are seamlessly routed onto the various cellular networks.
Botes has plans to unlock other valuable features of the CellSys system. Using the SMS return path in the CellSys system would allow technicians in the field to respond to callouts by SMS, and to have their messages monitored by the EDS helpdesk.
Botes explains that within some critical systems support calls are escalated at five-minute intervals, even while a technician might be busy with repairs. In the demanding IT environment in which EDS operates, where downtime is measured by the most demanding clients in rands and cents, return SMS could result in a near real-time tracking of system repairs and fault correction.
Instant text messaging, with outbound and inbound SMS handled by CellSys, is the kind of technological advantage that helps EDS to maintain the highest level of service demanded by SA's top corporates.
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SMS and mobile technology leader CellSys provides enterprise enabling SMS systems on a wide range of applications and platforms. The CellSys service includes a fully redundant network infrastructure for connection to GSM operators worldwide (including SA's Vodacom and MTN). This ensures an unparalleled level of availability allowing organisations to implement SMS enabled business-critical applications. The simplicity of the interfaces and the ease of integration with the CellSys system means that SMS-enabled applications can be deployed quickly and easily, with minimal cost.
Offerings such as service level agreements, access to a 24-hour help desk, network monitoring, engineering support and integration services, and consulting has enabled CellSys to develop an impressive list of blue chip clients in the banking, financial services, manufacturing and mining industries.
Developed in the late 1990s, the CellSys SMS gateway supports the full range of GSM SMS functionality including ESMS (Enhanced Short Message Service), WIG, smart messages, picture messaging, e-mail to SMS, SMS to e-mail and mobile origination.
EDS
EDS, the world's largest independent information technology services company, provides strategy, implementation, business transformation and operational solutions for clients managing the business and technology complexities of the digital economy. EDS brings together the world's best technologies to address critical client business imperatives.
It helps clients eliminate boundaries, collaborate in new ways, establish their customers' trust and continuously seek improvement. EDS, with its management-consulting subsidiary, AT Kearney, serves the world's leading companies and governments in 60 countries. EDS reported revenues of $21.5 billion in 2002. The company's stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EDS) and the London Stock Exchange. Learn more at www.eds.com.
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