Teneo helps Southampton University Hospitals to manage its 5,000 user IT network

Published on: 22 December 2009

Teneo, a leading infrastructure optimisation specialist, has helped Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust to cost effectively manage its distributed IT network. The system also provides timely network status alerts where problems arise and detailed network usage information to help monitor network provision.

Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust (SUHT) provides local hospital services to some 540,000 people living in Southampton and south Hampshire and specialist services such as neurosciences, cardiac services and children's intensive care to more than three million people in central southern England and the Channel Islands. Sites in Southampton include Southampton General Hospital with 1,100 in-patient beds and the neighbouring Princess Anne maternity hospital.

The Trust’s IT network supports over 5,000 users and uses Cisco 4500 series network switches. The network is managed by a support team led by Ryan Hewitt, network manager for SUHT. The Trust previously used HP OpenView network management software together with CiscoWorks to help manage the network, but these products were not delivering robust performance and struggled with the sheer size of the network. Users were calling the network support team to report network faults, but support team members could not accurately pinpoint the location and reason for a fault – CiscoWorks network alerts would also come in long after the event had arisen.

The Trust was also embarking on a project to create one of the UK’s largest wireless networks – a network which has now won awards. Hewitt decided that they needed a network management solution that could cope with a growing network and would provide simple, effective network monitoring and management for his team.

Teneo understood the issues the Trust was having and developed a solution based on Castle Rock SNMPc Enterprise Network Manager software combined with Plixer Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyser. Both products offer powerful network management and analysis, combined with unrivalled reliability and ease-of-use.

SNMPc Enterprise is trusted by over 120,000 network managers globally to provide a secure distributed network management system that delivers proactive real-time monitoring across the network infrastructure. Plixer Scrutinizer provides rich detail on all network activities, including application usage, traffic type and alerts, with the ability to drill down to individual user level.

Since Teneo installed the solution, Hewitt and his team has been able to pinpoint network problems quickly and resolve issues before users even know there is a problem, virtually eliminating help desk calls. The solution is also scalable and is designed to cope with monitoring a large, distributed IT architecture.

Ryan Hewitt, network manager, Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust:

“In any large campus environment, being as proactive as possible is important for us. Scrutinizer provides granular insights into what is happening on the local area network (LAN) and intercepts traffic, spots bottlenecks and address issues. It enables us to plan and respond rapidly to new. It is fantastically simple to use.

”James Hall, marketing director, Teneo, commented:

“Castle Rock SNMPc and Plixer Scrutinizer are ideal solutions for large, distributed networks such as the one at SUHT. They are powerful tools which are responsive, robust and allow you manage at both macro and micro levels. With simple dashboard interfaces, these products are trusted favourites with network managers who want to proactively manage their networks.”

About Teneo Ltd
Teneo is an Infrastructure Optimisation Company, providing solutions that help customers with the Management, Performance and Virtualisation of their IT systems. Our focussed approach of understanding business goals and matching them to efficient IT solutions means that we are able to truly optimise IT infrastructure, leading to improved performance, greater user productivity and lower overall IT costs.

Teneo works with best-of-breed partners such as Riverbed and Castle Rock – it has been awarded Riverbed’s Reseller of the Year within its region for two consecutive years in 2007 and 2008. Teneo has 1,000 customers across 40 countries and provides a full range of pre and post sales customer care services. Visit www.teneo.net for more information.

For further information about Teneo Ltd, please contact:
Rebecca Brown, marketing executive, Teneo Ltd
Tel: 0118 983 8600. Email: rbrown@teneo.net

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