Challenge
NTT Com Managed Services is an agile, innovative organisation that offers end-to-end global managed services to a variety of customers. Headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, the provider serves customers with a consolidated next-generation process and delivery framework for its solutions. Its customers can take advantage of a single contract, set of SLAs, and one point of contact for all their services.
To manage its vast array of systems and components, NTT requires granular visibility into its IT environment, along with current, accurate configuration data. The provider relies on its ServiceNow configuration management database (CMDB) to provide a single system of record for its IT organisation.
“The core of our business is managing elements from the operating system, including Windows, Linux, DSX, all the way up to databases, middleware, Active Directory, web servers, and application servers,” says Oscar Garcia, COO, NTT Com Managed Services. “We also have another line of business that is tightly coupled with our organisation that includes the management of on-premise infrastructure, as well as components that are running on the cloud, such as AWS and Microsoft Azure.”
To gain the level of insight required across all these environments, NTT needed a monitoring solution that was tightly coupled with its CMDB. Its existing monitoring system provided some automation but supported only one-way integration with the ServiceNow CMDB. To fully connect the two systems, NTT had to manually specify in the CMDB system the specific components that would be tracked in its monitoring platform.
By having the ServiceNow CMDB fully integrated with LogicMonitor, we make sure that we are not missing anything, or forgetting to monitor anything.
Oscar Garcia COO, NTT Com Managed Services
Solution
After experimenting with several solutions, NTT migrated to the LogicMonitor platform. LogicMonitor delivers automated hybrid infrastructure monitoring and analytics, integrating smoothly with the provider’s CMDB for enhanced visibility across all of its environments.
“LogicMonitor is much more evolved because it allows us to provide only basic setup information, it then automatically discovers everything that’s running on a configuration item (CI), and pushes the information back to the CMDB,” says Garcia. “It makes the process much simpler. With just a few parameters, we can monitor a CI.”
NTT’s previous monitoring solution provided only one-way functionality, however, LogicMonitor offers bi-directional integration with the ServiceNow CMDB. “Things that are discovered within LogicMonitor can be pushed back to our CMDB, so we can enrich it.”
Deployment of the solution was an easy, seamless process that progressed smoothly. “We used the APIs extensively to automate the process,” says Garcia. “One of the reasons we chose LogicMonitor was because we were impressed with how easy is it to onboard new technologies and devices for monitoring.”
“One of the things we like the most is that we don’t need to worry about making sure that older parts of our network environment can still be monitored when a new release comes out,” he adds. “With LogicMonitor we don’t have to keep our labs up and running with older operating systems and legacy components, which is great.”
The integration improves our operational efficiency. When we need to import a new customer and create their CIs in the system, we can quickly get the monitoring up and running as we are spinning them up. This process used to be very time-consuming for our engineers.
Oscar Garcia COO, NTT Com Managed Services
Benefits
The ability to closely integrate LogicMonitor with the ServiceNow CMDB has helped NTT unleash several positive outcomes. Adding and modifying new customer offerings is now simpler and more efficient, improving the organisation’s business agility.
“The integration improves our operational efficiency,” says Garcia. “When we need to import a new customer and create their CIs in the system, we can quickly get the monitoring up and running as we are spinning them up. This process used to be very time-consuming for our engineers.”
The solution also helps NTT increase the quality of its network insight and operations because integrating ServiceNow and monitoring helps ensure that data is reliable.
8 years later, happier than ever
The Australia-based NTT ANZ team migrated to LogicMonitor in 2015 after replacing their previous incumbent monitoring platform, Zabbix. At the time, they were struggling with context switching from a monitoring and performance perspective of their managed services “heterogeneous storage environment” – consisting of 3Par, NetApp, EMC, Nimble, etc.
These operational inefficiencies were trickling downstream into customer dissatisfaction and NTT ANZ needed a solution to help solve this pain. NTT ANZ also still had several federal and local government customers with thousands of managed CIs remaining in Zabbix and was searching for a single pane view for all of their customers.
The Solution
LogicMonitor’s single pane of glass view has been a huge win for NTT ANZ, and with the completion of LogicMonitor’s data center in Sydney in 2021, the team was able to accelerate the growth of customer migrations.
The Results
With the solutions LogicMonitor has provided for 8 years and counting, NTT ANZ is able to increase the number of customers in LogicMonitor and has tripled their overall resources being monitored. By partnering with LogicMonitor, NTT ANZ has been able to compete and win larger and larger deals in their region with improved support, visibility and ease of onboarding.
Originally published March, 2019. Updated February 2023