[c-nsp] ISP Network Monitoring/Helpdesk/Workflow Automation

[Phil Bedard]

I've used Metasolv (now owned by Oracle) that which was customized  
for both a business ISP environment as well as a traditional telco  
environment and it worked well if you are looking for something to  
track historical customer issues and whatnot.   It's going to require  
some programmers in order to customize the UI, backend,  and whatnot  
to what you want, and it's expensive.     At some point though the  
freeware tools just don't really do all you want them to in a larger  
organization.  Ours did IP address management, all customer ordering/ 
provisioning workflow was done through it, as well as trouble  
ticketing, which I thought worked better than RT.  You could do  
inventory type management in it as well, but it had no real network  
monitoring/etc. in it.  The APIs are extensible so you could probably  
make it do that as well with enough work.

Phil


On Jul 8, 2007, at 3:56 AM, Paul Stewart wrote:

> Solarwinds - ran trial of it, didn't impress me much...
>
> Netsaint, Nagios, Big Brother - no thanks....
>
> RT - prefer Cerberus over RT which isn't saying too much....:)
>
> I have huge lists of possible software but looking for input on  
> what people
> are using in production and why more than anything else.  Perhaps I  
> should
> have made this clearer in my original posting.... Also, integration  
> between
> the applications is important...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gerry Boudreaux [mailto:gerry at tape.net]
> Sent: Saturday, July 07, 2007 11:59 PM
> To: Paul Stewart
> Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> Subject: Re: [c-nsp] ISP Network Monitoring/Helpdesk/Workflow  
> Automation
>
> Since you know JFFNMS :-)
>
> Also investigate solarwinds, netsaint, nagios, smokeping,  
> bigbrother, mrtg,
> and there are several others.
>
> There are also the commercial varieties also OpenView, NetCool etc.
> Which perform well and have scaleable architectures.
>
> There are also many "ticketing" systems, among which is RT.. Others  
> may
> suggest more.
>
> Hope this helps!
>
> G
>
>
> On Jul 7, 2007, at 9:34 PM, Paul Stewart wrote:
>
>> Hi folks...
>>
>> Looking for suggestions for "management software".... Both as
>> individual suggestions but also if there exists a product that  
>> does it
>> all and integrates....
>>
>> We have about 200 routers/switches (all Cisco) of which 100 are
>> inhouse and the rest are at customer sites, 60-80 servers running
>> Linux/ Windows, and then about another 120 devices such as DSLAM's,
>> UPS's, dial-up shelves etc.....  And I'm looking for a way to monitor
>> them (with thresholds, alarms, escalations, etc)
>>
>> On the "frontend" of the operation, we have about 45 people answering
>> phones and talking to customers, not including the technical and  
>> field
>> staff supporting them behind the scenes.  I want the information
>> gathered from the monitoring system to become present in the  
>> "customer
>> support"
>> system so that
>> when a customer calls in, if their SLA was effected by an outage  
>> or if
>> we had a major outage that was effecting them then the information is
>> part of their customer history.
>>
>> Finally, I'm looking for some automation that when customer XYZ sends
>> an email or opens a ticket through telephone, then the "system" will
>> begin routing their information to the correct group automatically
>> based on their "profile"....
>>
>> I've looked at dozens of packages and still am not sure which way to
>> go.
>> Budget is secondary compared to finding the right product....  I have
>> also talked with several companies such as HP, BMC, AdventNet and
>> Cittio....
>>
>> Today, we use JFFNMS (open source network monitoring) and Cerberus  
>> for
>> helpdesk applications.... There is no automation, workflow  
>> routing, or
>> customer histories in this setup.....
>>
>> Thoughts or experiences to share?  What is everyone using if you're a
>> service provider today??
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> Paul Stewart
>>
>>
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>
>
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Phil Bedard
philxor at gmail.com