Iron Mountain

To address its growing network issues, Iron Mountain appointed network management specialists, Teneo Ltd., who prescribed a dual solution comprising ‘Allot’ (to monitor and control key applications across the corporate WAN) and Castle Rock ‘SNMPc’ (to provide essential information on network health).

Since 1951, Iron Mountain (with market capital in excess of £2.3 billion) has been protecting the information assets of the world's businesses. Today, Iron Mountain is the world's largest records management company; storing, protecting and managing millions of cubic feet of business records for thousands of businesses – including more than half of both the FTSE 100 and the Fortune 500.

With over 10,000 employees, 600 locations worldwide (including 37 Iron Mountain facilities in the UK) it is business critical to understand, manage and control customer information across the network, which is where Teneo Ltd. came in.

Predominantly there were two specific issues to be addressed.

Firstly, Iron Mountain had to provide their remote users (such as account managers and sales personnel) with an environment in which they could utilise and synchronise their CRM efficiently without adversely effecting other core applications.

Secondly, accurate monitoring and reporting of network health and utilisation was becoming increasingly important as Iron Mountain’s network was growing at an accelerated rate, due to its ongoing acquisition programme. Whilst Iron Mountain were being provided with a managed service from their Network Service Provider, it was felt that a greater degree of monitoring and reporting was needed to understand exactly how the WAN was performing, in order to make qualified judgements on future capacity.

Tim Wallis, IT Services Manager, takes up the story, “Before we implemented the Allot and SNMPc solution recommended by Teneo, we were relying on the end-users to tell us how our network was performing. Just a few days after the installation, however, we where made aware of a kilostream problem that was causing the ISDN backup to kick-in 20-30 times a day.”

Tim goes further to say, “Before SNMPc we would have had to wait for the invoice before being aware that there was a problem. During a recent training session on SNMPc from Teneo, we noticed one of our clients’ networks had failed. We where able to call the client before they even realised they had a problem – this kind of proactivity is very impressive to our clients.

“The Allot NetEnforcer maps our business requirements and priorities onto the network. As the business changes, so does our network but NetEnforcer negates the need for us to upgrade or change the circuits all the time.”

Working with Teneo

Tim says “The Teneo team helped us by demonstrating the available products, stuck with us through the installation and implementation process, and were still in contact for on-going training. We’re now talking to them about solutions across Europe.

“With a ‘try-before-you-buy’ option on the Allot NetEnforcer product, we were able to see it working within our own environment before making a final commitment. This made it very easy to get budget approval, as its value to the business was immediately visible. Our network service provider offered network monitoring and reporting but at over 10 times the cost of us implementing SNMPc. SNMPc gives as so much more. It’s a proactive tool; not reactive, like our network service provider.”

Mark Wimbush, account manager at Teneo says, “Once we had established how Iron Mountain’s business works, it became obvious that a solution was needed that was quick to implement and which provided tangible benefits from day one. Furthermore, network management can often seem a daunting project to undertake, so we aim to ease the process and remove any confusion. By providing a dual solution of SNMPc and Allot, we were able to provide Iron Mountain with the requisite information to reduce downtime and costs immediately. It’s great to see a solution in place that optimises network usage and provides Iron Mountain with the ability for greater understanding of its network.”