Insurance Giant chooses op5 for Monitoring of IT Infrastructure
Swedish insurance giant AFA Försäkringar – the largest insurance company in Sweden in collective agreements - has installed op5 Monitor to monitor its IT infrastructure. op5 is a leading Swedish OSM (open source management) company that supplies software based on open source for control of IT systems and networks.
AFA Försäkringar today monitors everything from servers in Windows and Unix environments to the temperature in the company’s computer rooms with op5 Monitor. The background is that AFA Försäkringar had problems with monitoring the company’s IT infrastructure. The existing tools were very demanding in terms of time and resources. After plenty of irritation, complications and wasted consulting hours the company decided to try something new.
IPnett, a company that has the role of system integrator and adviser for AFA Försäkringar’s IT infrastructure, suggested that the company should try op5 Monitor. It was decided to run a so called pilot, a test to ensure that everything really functions the way it is supposed to according to the specified requirements. The pilot was satisfactory and op5 Monitor was installed.
”After three days the basic installation was done and we had a fully functional Windows monitoring. After another week we also had the Unix monitoring in place. Today we are very pleased with our monitoring. Open source products were new to us and I have to admit that we might have been a bit sceptical, but the solution was very tempting due to its low costs. Now we obtain what we want in a simple manner. And we know that we get good support from both op5 and IPnett when we need it”, said Per Chressman, Technical Manager at AFA Försäkringar.
“Since we knew that our client AFA Försäkringar did not obtain a satisfying result from its existing monitoring tools, we naturally wanted to help them with a better alternative. AFA Försäkringar had looked at op5’s products at a fair and we studied the specified rerquirements and the company’s desires”, said Thomas Rosén, Sales Manager at IPnett. “We know AFA Försäkringar’s IT environment very well and the company’s monitoring problem and therefore suggested op5 Monitor.”
There is a central display at the IT department where graphs show the status of the infrastructure. It is easy to see what happens and there is a good overview of all the systems. The standby technician receives an alarm if something goes wrong outside working hours and can immediately take action to prevent the serious consequences that could be a result of delayed detection and response. The morning technician can directly control if something needs to be done when he or she arrives to work. In that way one has eliminated the need for manual controls and op5 Monitor now handles controls automatically. All you need to do is check op5 Monitor.
”We are very pleased with our choice of monitoring tool. op5 Monitor has become a natural part of the entire IT environment”, concludes Per Chressman.