Single-Pane-of-Glass to Support Transition to New Monitoring Tools
Gilat Satellite Networks is a leading global provider of satellite-based broadband communications. Gilat provides thousands of enterprises, service providers and operators with efficient and reliable satellite-based connectivity solutions. Addressing the needs of residential broadband access, cellular backhaul, enterprise communications, in-flight connectivity, rail and maritime mobility, defense and public safety applications, Gilat’s products and solutions are in use in more than 90 countries worldwide.
Key Challenges
Gilat Satellite Networks has been expanding its managed services division and the monitoring setup had to be updated to keep up with the growing requirements of the operation. In addition to that, the monitoring was not centralized but spread over numerous Zabbix instances and separate networks, making its maintenance expensive and complicated. To make the set-up more efficient, the NOC team planned to migrate to Paessler PRTG and centralize all the network monitoring. In order to accelerate the transition without running into issues, the team had to use the monitoring tools side by side and troubleshoot any discrepancies to ensure the current standards are maintained and improved.
Savision Supports the Migration to Paessler PRTG
Gilat Satellite Networks needed a powerful single pane of glass solution to easily manage the migration and make sure they had full visibility of the two systems side-by-side.
“We needed a simple and efficient solution to manage this project and quickly complete the migration. Savision was the perfect fit for our requirements and ensure everything kept running
smoothly during configuration testing.”
– Amit Levi, Global NOC Manager
With Martello’s Savision solution, the team was able to:
• Easily and quickly connect the legacy and new systems with minimal set up
• Create custom views combining data and alerts from different monitoring tools
• Monitor their service availability and making sure their SLAs were not affected during the migration
• Easily evaluate and troubleshoot different configurations
Further Developments with Savision
After the transition is completed, Gilat Satellite Networks plans to keep innovating and Savision will play a key role in ITOps development. The next step will be adding an ITSM integration to their Savision instance, which will allow them to automate alert-to-incident workflows and accelerate incident resolution. In the long term, Savision’s Elasticsearch database will become the foundation for a Machine Learning event-management system.
As technology continues to advance, so do the needs of the mobile workforce. From video calls in hotel rooms, to streaming presentations in conference rooms and booking tickets in the lobby, the real-time demands of a hotel network are continuously being tasked. The guest experience is paramount to the hotel industry and can make or break your bottom line. High Speed Internet Access (HSIA) now ranks among the most important things to travellers, for both business and leisure- Investing in your network doesn’t always have to be costly in both hardware and maintenance. This blueprint is your best way to deal with the pain points that are vital for hospitality.
Check off these 10 things to keep your business up and running smoothly:
LAN Failsafe - Keep your HSIA running even during power outages
In a 24/7 hotel industry, anything can happen at any time. From power outages related to weather or technical difficulties on the grid, to hardware malfunctions at the hotel, your network can take time to restore once it loses power. Using link balancing ensures that bandwidth is available at all times and manages the failover process. Make sure to select a solution with fail-to-wire mechanisms, ensuring that, even if the link balancer itself lose power, normal operations can still continue.
3G/4G/LTE Mobile Carrier Support - A lifeline to the outside when the cables are cut
Link balancers have the capability of adding 3G, 4G and LTE mobile carrier links which can deliver significant value and internet connectivity insurance to a hotel property. 3G, 4G and LTE connections have now become fast, mature and reliable sources of network access. Along with the configuration, the link balancer can be setup to only transfer specific types of traffic or only traffic from certain users or groups, which means that admins can still be connected even when the wired network is out.
Time of Day Conditions - Allocate bandwidth where it’s needed, when it’s needed
A network on a hotel property is not a one-size-fits-all scenario. When you operate a 24/7, 365 day a year business, you need to be able to adjust for different types of situations. With needs shifting from guestrooms, to the conference center, depending on the time of day, you need to be utilizing your bandwidth efficiently by not having one specific area being overused, while other areas have little to no traffic. Being able to adjust automatically the configuration based on time-based conditions is very important to having network success.
Quality of Service - Ensure the right type of traffic receives the bandwidth it needs
As a hotel property, you want to be able to manage the bandwidth that is allocated to services and applications to ensure that key elements like email, VoIP and VPN have the required amount of resources to run. Once set up, a link balancer can promote, demote or block certain traffic types, or send it over different links, to ensure the quality of service on critical applications.
Layer-7 Traffic Shaping - Block or limit undesirable application traffic, prioritize business applications
With the continuous overwhelming growth of demands, a hotel property faces an uphill battle providing bandwidth to satisfy the needs of their business and the guests. This battle leaves the hotel with two possible options, either provide additional bandwidth to satisfy the need, at a significant cost to the property, or take control of the existing bandwidth and fully saturate its effectiveness in your organization. Deep Packet Inspection solutions such as Martello’s App Optimizer can provide the hotel with this control and bring order to the bandwidth chaos, allowing the property to control what is made a priority.
Tiered WIFI - Guarantee higher performance for VIP guests
One challenge in hospitality is being able to offer and deliver tiered guest internet services. Offering guests different internet options, possibly for purchase, requires an immediate need for reliable, secured bandwidth. Today, the majority of tiered internet services are being controlled and delivered wholly within the guest internet gateway by increasing and decreasing the Quality of Service limits. Although this increases the cap of how much bandwidth a guest can access at the time, if the internet link is fully saturated, a guest who purchased higher bandwidth tier is not going to get any more bandwidth or higher priority of bandwidth than a guest who selected a lower tier such as the free guest option. This leaves the guest with a negative experience. Solutions such as Martello’s PrioMap can mark IP packets can override configuration including load balancing algorithms, link selection and the Quality of Service queue.
Traffic Segmentation - Send key application traffic on dedicated links to ensure delivery
Whether it’s admin data or paid guest Internet traffic, when you need key application traffic to be sent, traffic segmentation will help to ensure your delivery. Hotels can use multiple ISPs for outbound traffic to the Internet so the load will be distributed. Using a link balancer that will continue to monitor the health of each ISP and react appropriately should a link fail in the process.
High Availability - link balancing products can be deployed in high availability and failover mode to ensure maximum uptime to increase business continuity.
Keep your business running smoothly by deploying link balancing products in high availability or failover mode. When used in this mode, the device is designated as the “active” or “master” unit, and the secondary is designed as the “passive” or “slave” unit. Both units are constantly communicating information and metrics. Should the “active” unit stop responding, the “passive” unit takes over traffic management and continues operating normally while alerting the IT department.
Keep Private Traffic Secure – Separate your guest HSIA traffic from your corporate traffic to avoid unpleasant surprises
Forward traffic between two or more interfaces while providing a fast packet interception service. By logically segmenting your device into multiple virtual balancers, you can create the opportunity for multiple infrastructures to be managed while keeping your Internet connection strong and your costs down.
Intelligent Condition Verification - Set rules and thresholds to optimize your bandwidth usage.
Hotel properties have a lot to worry about, so if you can optimize your bandwidth usage through rules and thresholds, you will not have to service your network frequently. You can set it to take actions when specific conditions happen, such as link failure or saturation. This will ensure that you have a plan for when something unexpected happens on your network.
These solutions can help hotel property managers to outline a clear and efficient strategy for HSIA access while keeping guest satisfaction scores high and costs under control all while having in-house business continuity options.
Bandwidth is now a key amenity in a hotel, and HSIA needs will continue to grow as the Internet becomes more media-rich every day and guests bring more connected devices while expecting “at home” connectivity performance. Martello’s solutions can help organizations to outline a clear and efficient strategy for HSIA access while keeping guest satisfaction scores high and costs under control and having in-house business continuity options.
Download ourInfographic to find out how we’ve helped the hospitality industry to stay connected.
“Hospitality is a 24/7 business, and Martello’s software-as-a-service has been keeping Firmdale ahead of UC network performance problems for more than four years, improving our guest experience. Martello is always improving and augmenting its offering, solving more of our network performance challenges from a single pane of glass,” Mark Rupert Read of Firmdale Hotels
Want to meet us in person to discuss how you can get the most out of your bandwidth and better serve your guests? Catch us at HITEC in Minneapolis, Minnesota from June 17-20 at Booth #1413.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is everywhere and its uses are growing exponentially. IoT is being used by local governments to build smart cities, businesses to develop smart products like appliances, electronics and wearable technology, and consumers who benefit from the convenience of not having to carry cash, keys or cards. Industry analysts expect over 20 billion IoT devices will be connected by 2020, which is a 2.5 x increase over the 8 billion connected devices in 2017*.
IoT touches many areas of the market, including manufacturing, health care, transportation and utilities. IoT has promised more analytical data insights that will help to create greater efficiency and enhance customer satisfaction. The data collected includes everything from sensors that can transmit data like temperature, speed, video feed, pressure and location to items including cars, trucks and machines, that are all connected over the internet. Once the data is collected, it is then analyzed and translated into information that is actionable for businesses and government.
By 2025, it is expected that over 75 billion IoT devices will be connected*. That will cause an increase in traffic over network infrastructure as massive amounts of data will be transported. Without the right network infrastructure, the concept of IoT will not be scalable for this exponential growth.
IoT is different than traditional networks that have static capacity and variable demands. With IoT applications, both capacity and demand are variable, which poses challenges for networks. It makes it difficult to detect and allocate resources, manage capacity and deliver performance.
Service-Aware networks are the solution to this particular challenge. Performance analytics and testing are used to identify faults, while SD-WAN is used to optimize utilization and performance of system and network resources in near real-time.
SD-WAN play a fundamental role as businesses continue to embrace IoT. Choosing the right SD-WAN platform is critical to ensuring businesses are able to fully optimize their operations.
How does SD-WAN enable IoT business initiatives?
Visibility: Real-time visibility into the network is critical. This removes the guesswork and enables organizes to run more efficiently by speeding up troubleshooting and know exactly where the issue is and how to fix it.
Traffic-segmentation: Send key application traffic on dedicated links to ensure delivery.
High Availability: Link balancing products can be deployed in high availability and failover mode to ensure maximum uptime to increase business continuity.
Intelligent Condition Verification: Set rules and thresholds to optimize your bandwidth usage. You can set actions for when specific conditions happen, such as a link failure or saturation. This will ensure you have a plan for when something unexpected happens on your network.
On May 9, 2019, Martello President & CEO John Proctor spoke at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec at IoT613 on how you can achieve IoT-Ready Network Connectivity in today’s world. Here he demonstrated how Martello’s UC Aware SD-WAN solution builds on the strength of Martello’s UC history and expertise to deliver network results in today’s landscape.
Looking to the future we have the concept of autonomous vehicles and other IoT applications, including smart cities, first responder networks and telemedicine on our minds.
In the case of autonomous vehicles, even a fraction of a second of delay can have devastating results. Taking measures including multi-link redundancy, and leveraging multiple network providers to remain connected at all times, even in areas with limited network coverage can make the difference between life or death. This is critical for IoT applications that include emergency response, transportation, matters of public safety and military.
CEO John Proctor asked in his IoT613 speaking session: “Driving down between cities, how often does your call go down, as it jumps from one tower to the other? How comfortable are you with that happening to your car, when you’re sitting in the back?”
Are you willing to take the risk of not having a network that is up to the challenge?
Working with Blackberry QNX’s Autonomous Vehicles, Martello is bringing the reliable, secure connectivity of the office, to the car. Using a combination of hardware and advanced network algorithms, Martello gives your vehicle the ability to connect to multiple towers and service providers simultaneously, improving the signal strength and ensuring there’s no drop as you switch between towers and service providers.
“This proof of concept demonstrated that Martello’s technology can deliver reliable network connectivity in challenging mobile applications such as autonomous vehicles”, said Grant Courville, VP, Products and Strategy at BlackBerry QNX in a press release. “We’re pleased to have collaborated with Martello to bring this proof of concept to fruition, working with the BlackBerry QNX operating system”.
See how we’re bringing our expertise to the road:
“This proof of concept is significant, because of the growing number of IoT applications which will require reliable network connectivity in challenging mobile environments, where both capacity and demand are variable”, said John Proctor, President and CEO of Martello. “I look forward to demonstrating our technology to the broader IoT and transportation ecosystem, and thank BlackBerry QNX for the opportunity prove our concept with an industry leader”.
The world of IoT is constantly changing and constantly having to update your network to keep up is an inefficient and expensive way to go about it. Choose a solution that is ready for tomorrow, today and be ahead of the wave of IoT devices that are coming our way.
