Industry type
Branches
Network size
Although the retailer sells online, most customer purchases happen through its physical retail stores. These stores are placed in prime shopping areas, offering a rich experience for visiting customers that includes an appealing atmosphere and diverse range of products. Due to high footfall, having a swift and efficient purchase experience was important for the retailer. Any delays or technical glitches at checkout could lead to frustrated customers, lost revenue, and reputational damage.
The retailer's billing transactions depend on its proprietary mobile point of sale (mPOS) system installed in-house on iPads at the billing counters. The retailer also depends on multiple ISPs for network connectivity. Its leadership recognized that any disruptions could lead to unhappy customers, and more was needed to ensure that the devices integral to the billing process—routers, access points, and iPads—were functioning optimally and performing well.
The retailer's network encompasses a complex IT infrastructure of servers, network devices, applications, routers, and switches. With two data centers and a network consisting of over 5,000 devices and 500 servers, maintaining seamless operations was critical. The team chose ManageEngine Site24x7 to monitor the performance of the servers, devices, and applications.
And when it came to managing network traffic—a key component for seamless billing—the team opted for ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. NetFlow Analyzer played a vital role in providing detailed insights into network traffic usage. Its ability to analyze bandwidth consumption and identify traffic patterns helped the retailer detect and address potential issues before they could impact the billing process.
Reducing customer wait times and ensuring a faster billing process were crucial for providing an exceptional in-store experience. Given the high volume of transactions and the need for seamless operations, NetFlow Analyzer Enterprise edition was the perfect fit, enabling the IT teams to monitor monitor and manage network traffic across all the stores from a centralized window.
The solution's system architecture consists of a central server that provides visibility for the central NOC team and individual collectors deployed in each branch store. The collectors monitor the local branch network, process the flows from the routers, and pass the compressed data to the central server through a secure HTTPS connection. The central server then stores the data from the collectors and provides a unified view for the generation of reports.
Bandwidth monitoring allowed IT administrators to identify issues, like traffic spikes, bandwidth usage by unnecessary applications, and other potential disruptions, before they could impact end users, particularly those at the checkout counters.
This comprehensive network view allowed them to optimize resource allocation effectively, ensuring that sufficient bandwidth was dedicated to the billing process, thereby enhancing overall operational efficiency.
With multiple branches across India, the retailer required a centralized solution to monitor in-store APs, routers, and mPOS devices. With NetFlow Analyzer's IP grouping feature, the IT teams could categorize devices and interfaces based on store location and get complete visibility into the traffic of each store from a unified console.
In addition to regular bandwidth and traffic monitoring, the IT teams needed in-depth historical data to analyze network traffic and proactively prevent issues. The CTO and other IT leaders also required weekly reports on bandwidth usage to ensure that store operations continued seamlessly. NetFlow Analyzer's default bandwidth reports met these needs effectively. These reports provided a comprehensive view of bandwidth usage, including metrics based on applications, users, and conversations. In particular, the Consolidated Report feature allowed the IT teams to access detailed information such as application bandwidth consumption and the source and destination of traffic flows.
The retailer's IT teams required a mechanism to receive immediate notifications about irregular or high bandwidth utilization and to gain insights into future bandwidth requirements. NetFlow Analyzer's in-built alerts and capacity planning reports addressed both of these needs. By configuring thresholds for important metrics like bandwidth utilization, the IT teams received instant alerts whenever an end user or device exceeded the allocated bandwidth.
This proactive approach enabled them to address issues well beforehand and maintain an optimal network performance. Additionally, the capacity planning reports provided valuable insights into interface metrics based on volume, speed, utilization and packets with one-minute average of IN and OUT traffic. It also lists the Top 10 applications IN and OUT details with application type, amount of traffic, and traffic percentage. This information enabled the IT teams to forecast future bandwidth needs and make informed decisions to enhance the network's current setup.
After deploying NetFlow Analyzer, the IT teams could now pinpoint and address congestion issues before they affected customers, leading to smoother transactions.
ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is a flow-based, highly scalable, full-featured bandwidth monitoring and network traffic analysis solution. It monitors your network to provide end-to-end visibility into your network traffic and bandwidth usage with customizable multi-level reports, making bandwidth management easy and efficient. It analyzes behavioral patterns to proactively detect internal and external security threats such as DDoS, port scan, and zero-day attacks. With its traffic forecasting and capacity planning features, NetFlow Analyzer enables you to plan bandwidth needs and enterprise IT requirements ahead of time. Create and audit QoS policies to ensure that critical traffic is passing through the network effortlessly. Navigate the cause of failure; identify bottlenecks; and manage and track all network traffic activities, top talkers, and conversations with an overview of your entire distributed network from a single, central console. For more information about NetFlow Analyzer, visit manageengine.com/netflow.