March 5, 2020 | Chris Polston | Senior Manager, Technical Support Services
As part of the proactive nature of support and managed services at Spinnaker Support, we are often asked to “monitor the system.” We have two packages of managed services that specifically include monitoring. For JD Edwards (JDE) customers, monitoring can mean the core JDE servers or the entire JDE ecosystem in use for a business – from the database to the third-party integrations like FormScape and DSI.
Monitoring is, by definition, a time-intensive (and, let’s be frank, fairly monotonous) task. Managed services companies like Spinnaker Support have traditionally provided this as a manual service. On a regular schedule, a Level 2 or 3 engineer would log in, check and note values for specific servers, and repeat the same process the next day or week.
This method has at least two drawbacks: (1) the cost, and (2) the point-in-time nature of a daily check. If the system suffers a problem ten minutes after the check, then the business users are the ones who report it to their IT department, who in turn report it to us. This could be a printer running out of paper, or a web server getting overloaded. A point-in-time check only captures the state of the system at that moment.
Innovation in Monitoring: Efficient, Automated Solutions
We believe that monitoring can be better, enhanced by new technologies that provide complete, automated coverage and actionable insights. That’s why, starting in late 2019, Spinnaker Support tested and began to deploy a cutting-edge solution to constantly monitor designated systems, which can be web servers, databases, network switches, VM hosts, and the JDE application itself.
With this new, automated technology, we actively monitor your system every minute of every day. Alerts are immediately routed to the team or individual best suited to handle the job. We have integrated this service with our JIRA ticketing system to create emergency tickets when a critical P1/P2 event (like a main server or database going offline) occurs. The IT department is no longer in the middle, between the systems and the managed services vendor, and this has turned the monitoring and incident response model on its head.
In the new method of monitoring, Spinnaker Support receives the ticket instantly, and within minutes begins to work with our proven rapid response by experienced JD Edwards professionals. We then alert our primary customer contacts, who proactively inform the business users that their work may be impacted by an event, rather than the old, reverse situation.
For a common example, imagine that a printer has run out of paper and reports are beginning to queue, but no one yet knows this. With a manual approach to monitoring, this type of system issue may take longer to detect. With the new system, an “out of paper” alert is sent directly to the IT resource on location at the warehouse. The incident is captured and reported, with time no longer spent finding the correct resource. She receives a timely email, with the management team copied, and can rectify the problem without ever having heard from a live individual.
Data Transparency for Everyone
In addition to a highly efficient system of alerts and ticket logging, a significant upside of this new automated solution is the on-demand availability of system data for Spinnaker Support and for the customer. We collect and share the data with our customers, enabling a collaborative approach to incident resolution and system maintenance. With this level of transparency, not to mention complete administration by Spinnaker Support, our customer’s IT department gains a new tool for troubleshooting.
The automated solution, which requires no resources or time from the customer, unlocks a treasure trove of data on the current state of the system and provides a baseline going back one year. Trends, periodic activity spikes, and historical review for issues reported after the fact are all now easily available to both Spinnaker Support and the on-site IT team.
Contact Us to Learn More
Overall, our monitoring of JD Edwards customer systems offers tremendous benefit:
- Your system is monitored every minute, every day
- The solution proactively creates tickets for critical issues
- Everyone has a ‘single pane’ view of data
- The system data is retained for one-year
- The monitoring solution is fully supported and administered by Spinnaker Support
If this solution interests you, contact us. I look forward to discussing Spinnaker Support’s managed services, and how we can help your organization to monitor its JD Edwards systems.
