"Research Company Solves a Low Visibility Nightmare with an Alarm Monitoring Upgrade..."

T/Mon NOC Helps Solve Their Visibility Issues...

Thinking about his old alarm monitoring equipment, Network Technician Shawn B. is relieved to be rid of the numeric-string alerts he used to receive. As he managed day-to-day alarms at his company, memorizing and translating long strings of numbers created a lot of unnecessary headaches. "You would get an alarm, not really know what it was, and disregard it," Shawn said. With his old system, customers calling in would sometimes be his first notification of a problem: "That's really our nightmare -us not knowing about a problem until a customer calls up."

Unreadable Alerts Made Alarm Management and Training a Real Chore...
With his old monitoring system, Shawn received only long strings of digits that represented his remote site alarms. "With the old boxes, it took a PhD practically to understand. You had to learn the whole syntax." Monitoring was a real chore for Shawn, as he had to memorize the correlations between his sites and the numeric strings. From there, he still had to decode the specific alarm point and to determine if it was an alarm or clear.

"Now, you can bring a new person in, spend half a day with them, and they're good to go..."

This clumsy process was the only way Shawn had to monitor his large territory of remote sites, and he was looking for something to make his job easier. "The Omnitronix did absolutely no alpha pager notification," he said. "With the old box, you just basically got a string of digits -it was impossible to remember."

Which Alarm Notification Would YOU Prefer?...

Plain English Alarm Notifications Dramatically Improve Response Times...
Shawn found his solution with NetGuardian remotes and T/Mon NOC from DPS Telecom. Alarm monitoring became instantly easier and more manageable. One benefit was the enhanced alarm notification capability. "With the NetGuardian, with an email solution and an alpha pager solution, we can see what this major or minor alarm actually is."

He also found the NetGuardian's web and command line interfaces were better and easier to teach than their old system. "Now, you can bring a new technician in, spend half a day with them, and they're good to go."

"For us, it's fixing the problem before our customer tells us about it..."

Decreased windshield time is another benefit Shawn and his technicians are seeing with their DPS equipment, especially the relays in the NetGuardian. "We can dial in through the DPS or go through the LAN and flip that relay to make it power cycle," he said. "Relays keep you from having to jump in a truck and driving halfway across town." Before, Shawn sometimes had to make the drive across town to his site, just to press a button. "It definitely decreases that," he said.

Factory Training Takes Alarm Monitoring Skills To The Next Level...
To enhance his understanding of his DPS equipment, Shawn recently attended a hands-on Factory Training event at DPS Headquarters. His goal at training was to learn how to integrate T/Mon with their existing system, and learn new features of their NetGuardians. At the end of his four-day training at DPS headquarters in Fresno, Calif., Shawn walked away with plenty of useful information. "If you've got DPS products, you definitely need to get you and your people in here," he said.

Monitoring the Network is Fast - and Now Hassle-Free...
Now, armed with modern remotes and a modern alarm master, Shawn and his colleagues have the tools they need to keep their network online and their customers happy. "For us, it's fixing the problem before the customer tells us about it."