Leading Charity Organization Selects Ipswitch WhatsUp Professional to Aid in its Mission of Helping the Disabled
Charity Organization, Scope, Relies on WhatsUp to Increase Availability and Reliability of its Network across 400 Locations
Lexington, Massachusetts - August 14, 2006 - Ipswitch, a leading developer of network management, messaging and file transfer solutions, today announced that Scope, an organization in England and Wales focused on helping those with cerebral palsy achieve full equality, has selected WhatsUp Professional to monitor and optimize its information technology (IT) network. With 3,500 employees and 10,000 volunteers working out of 150 offices and 250 retail outlets across Great Britain, Scope relies heavily on its network to coordinate the delivery of products and services tailored to the specific needs of the disabled.
“WhatsUp Professional enables our staff to spend time where it counts most – identifying and correcting network issues – rather than wasting time chasing false alarms,” said Scope CIO Thomas Metzler. “WhatsUp tells you when and where problems exist so you can fix them before the phone starts ringing.”
Scope utilizes WhatsUp Professional to monitor its switches, routers, firewalls, broadband connections, printers, servers, desktops as well as Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange. In addition, it also monitors remote service providers for services such as DNS, SMTP, FTP and HTTP. Although the Scope network team manages WhatsUp Professional centrally, a total of 12 helpdesk, desktop, network and server engineers access the tool via the Web interface to manage 150 remote sites as well as the central computer center.
“Our IT infrastructure enables our highly distributed organization to function in a coordinated and efficient fashion,” Metzler continued. “Ultimately, this enables Scope to fulfil its mission of providing the disabled with the products and services they need to achieve true equality.”
Prior to selecting WhatsUp, Scope relied on a combination of Agent Guardian and simple scripting tools for monitoring its extensive network. However, the organization found it difficult to identify potential problem areas and wanted a solution that would not only increase the reliability and availability of the network, but could determine the extent and root cause of outages quickly and efficiently. The goal was to quickly pinpoint equipment failures and to notify users, ideally before they had noticed problems.
Scope uses WhatsUp Professional to track network failures and send alerts when problems occur, restart a stopped service, or launch a program automatically. The alerts can be sent via email, pager, mobile phone, SMS or audio alerts, plus system task tray alerts.
“When critical components fail, WhatsUp Professional is configured to send alerts to dedicated desktop, network and server engineers. The helpdesk monitors WhatsUp to immediately see if there are problems. When people call in from remote sites, helpdesk staff checks connectivity prior to starting a more comprehensive trouble analysis – it is now often possible to advise a caller upfront as to the likely cause of a problem,” explained Metzler. “This was never possible prior to us using WhatsUp. We can now quickly provide information about service levels and response times – not only for central computer resources, but to individual desktops.”
WhatsUp Professional helps businesses, like Scope, keep critical business technology working efficiently so that valuable time can be spent running the business. The network monitoring solution allows users to report on the network’s performance, discover and map network assets and notify network administrators about potential trouble spots before problems bring the system down.
“WhatsUp gives customers exactly what they need – an easily deployed and user-friendly platform that keeps their infrastructure up and running,” said Ennio Carboni, director, product management of Ipswitch. “In addition to its ease-of-use, the product offers high levels of scalability making it a valuable solution when SMBs experience the growth pains associated with the expansion of their IT infrastructure.”
About Ipswitch
Ipswitch develops and markets software that works for small and mid-sized businesses worldwide. More than 100 million people use Ipswitch software to collaborate via Ipswitch Collaboration Suite, monitor their networks with Ipswitch WhatsUp®, and transfer files over the Internet using the market leading Ipswitch WS_FTP® Professional client and Ipswitch WS_FTP Server. To view the Ipswitch blog visit http://blogs.ipswitch.com. To read Ipswitch CEO Roger Greene’s blog visit http://blogs.ipswitch.com/greene/. Ipswitch values community involvement; visit http://icare.ipswitch.com to find out how to become involved. For product and sales information, visit http://www.ipswitch.com.