Insurance is a 24/7 business, people need to be able to get in touch at any hour of the day regarding their policies, cover, and claims, so technology downtime is not an option – the company can’t afford to stand still for even a minute.
The systems team at AXA Gulf is responsible for running the business’ data centers and ensuring the corporate systems and applications are up and running at all times. The team has a detailed checklist of performance indicators which it reviews on a daily basis to ensure the business’ data centers and applications are running as they should be. The checklist encompasses the key areas that can impact applications and data center performance including memory and disk space, storage, hardware and servers, WAN, ping rates, application URLs, and temperature and humidity. Historically, this was a manual process which was often challenging and always time-consuming.
iAbout AXA Gulf
AXA Gulf made the move to using Paessler’s PRTG network monitoring solution in 2017 and worked with Paessler’s UAE partner, GWC Networks, to implement the platform.
With PRTG’s sensors collecting data from the entire business’ technology infrastructure, AXA Gulf now has much better insights into how its data centers and applications are running. It’s able to monitor performance from a central dashboard to present an overview of key performance indicators. The team can easily review the daily checklist and can see at a glance when potential issues flag up on the dashboard during the working day. Out of hours, alerts can be shared via email or a mobile app to the relevant team members to ensure they are aware of any issue. This round the clock approach to monitoring puts the team in a strong position to take insightful action to address any potential issues before they impact the business, whatever the time of day.
Given downtime is such an issue to the business, the team has a responsibility to report application issues to the senior management team. If issues do occur for any reason, the team is able to access historical data in order to identify what led to the problem and prepare reports and actions plans to share with the management team.
Sensors and alarms status from AXA Gulf’s PRTG instance.
The use of PRTG across AXA Gulf’s applications and data centers has had a huge impact on reducing potential downtime across the business.
For starters, the team is able to complete its daily checklist much more quickly and easily than before, freeing up time which is a valuable resource for any business. In addition, with the PRTG dashboard and alert system, it now has much better visibility throughout the day and night on potential issues that it can then quickly prioritize and address before they become big problems.
The insights that PRTG gives us means we are much more efficient in our daily checking of application and systems performance.