How to reduce risk and provide a seamless client experience with Auvik’s Network Management
Discover how CorCystems, a leading managed IT services provider, uses Auvik Network Management to automate network documentation and improve client experience.
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CorCystems saw a number of benefits with our Network Management
About CorCystems
Established in 2000, CorCystems Managed IT Services is an information system solutions company providing businesses with the management of computer networks, hardware, software and IT services including cloud services, managed and comanaged IT, network support, IT strategy, and VOIP solutions.
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The challenges that CorCystems faced
With over 20 years of experience in managing their clients’ data networks, CorCystems continues to evolve and stay ahead of the needs of growing businesses by adopting streamlined processes and advanced IT tools and solutions. CorCystems aims to improve business processes and support internal IT clients with unique tools and resources that help them maintain a competitive technology advantage.
The technical department at CorCystems is divided into two teams—the Reactive IT team focusing on the remediation of tickets and the Proactive IT team focusing on improvements. The two teams collectively address 600 to 700 escalation tickets on a monthly basis on top of managing their clients’ networks. Hence, they wanted to standardize the workflows to reduce the time taken to troubleshoot issues. Manual management of distributed client networks was very difficult and also raised data integrity concerns.
The company’s Operations Success Manager is responsible for supporting managed IT teams to find tools and solutions to help them improve day-to-day operations. Network data integrity was a huge need and priority for CorCystems. Their team evaluated many network monitoring tools with the following technical goals in mind:
- Manage IT tools, people, and minimize noise
- Reduce risk and provide the uninterrupted experience for clients
- Continue to provide best-in-class solutions to clients
With a successful trial, CorCystems decided to deploy Auvik for managing their client networks as it not only addressed IT team goals but was also a clear choice in achieving company goals including revenue growth, cost savings, and expanding security offerings to clients. Auvik is now CorCystems’ partner in providing true network visibility and maintaining documentation of network infrastructure.
How Auvik solved their challenges
Network Documentation and Integrity
In the past, CorCystems relied on manual management of client networks, which meant sending a technician to document and map the network infrastructure. That was not only a time-consuming process, but there was no guarantee that they had complete awareness of the network and how devices were connected. Even after spending hours, the documentation would be out of date if something changed. Now, Auvik automatically inventories the networks, devices, and more, saving hours of manual effort for every site.
Auvik is continually checking the network for changes. It ensures the documentation is kept up-to-date, in real time. Additionally, Auvik automates and maintains up-to-date backups of network devices whenever there is a configuration change. “Data integrity is our primary use case. We know what’s there on the network, and we know if there are any changes made recently with the backups. This is super important because we are living in this remote environment, and it is not possible to physically go everywhere to fix any issues,” says Stephen Abramson, Operations Success Manager at CorCystems.
Faster Troubleshooting with Network Visibility
Resolving escalation tickets and meeting SLAs are important for business. With the goal to standardize the internal process, CorCystems leveraged Auvik to streamline the workflow to address network incidents. The pre-configured, out-of-the-box alerts helped CorCystems to stay on top of network events. Auvik constantly polls the client networks from topology to configuration history, to device performance, to give a real-time picture of client networks. With centralized device logs, the CorCystems teams are able to troubleshoot faster and reduce the mean time to resolve (MTTR) network incidents. With Auvik’s global view, CorCystems is able to view, search, filter, and manage any client network without the hassle.
“We deployed Auvik in one of our client’s locations which was often struck by lightning, and they also had non-standard wireless access points. During one such lightning hit, Auvik helped us to identify the devices that were affected through our ticketing system, and we got to the site and replaced them with new devices on the same day.”
Automated Inventory for all Departments
Keeping network information up-to-date is next to impossible and often includes errors. The Accounting and Finance teams at CorCystems leveraged Auvik to pull lifecycle data from supported devices, taking the manual work out of maintaining contract expirations, ensuring software is up to date, or determining if the devices are still available for purchase. Auvik also ensures client environments stay protected with the latest critical updates. Auvik’s inventory and lifecycle information is crucial for CorCystems to alert their Sales team on end-of-life licenses. Stephen mentions, “Network mapping and inventory is used by all facets of business, not just service teams.”
Secure Access Control
CorCystems uses Auvik to centrally manage user access across teams. Auvik provides granular control over who can do what when using the system. CorCystems is able to easily define roles and configure permissions—they can give an employee Read and Write access to a few sites and not allow them to make changes on other sites. Stephen adds, “Auvik’s ability to manage whoever logs into the system restricts any intrusion from unauthorized members. Access control is super useful for us.”
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