BMW sets up hybrid network to ease jams

BMW has set up a hybrid intranet/internet infrastructure to solve network bottlenecks created by the influx of one million emails a day.

Instead of general network monitoring, the car manufacturer focused on intranet and internet performance. It used Agilent's FireHunter to provide statistics on availability and data on the causes of bottlenecks.

"E-applications have become so significant to the company that we are having to monitor them constantly and respond proactively to problems," said Walter Trapa, technology consultant at BMW.

FireHunter simulates user behaviour to monitor performance, and generates real-time graphs and historical reports for planning and trend analysis.

It compares new data with baselines and thresholds according to a typical day-pattern, and issues warnings on potential violations of service level agreements. In time, analysis of data will provide company-specific growth rates and trends.

"The ability to monitor internal and external internet services simultaneously gives organisations a complete view of their IT performance," said Agilent's John Smith. "By deploying specific real-time monitoring across a common infrastructure, companies like BMW can not only tell when a fault has occurred but rapidly pinpoint the source of the problem."

BMW's targeting of bottlenecks has increased user satisfaction, avoided expansion costs and made planning more reliable by calculating the maximum number of users on one email server before response times fall below acceptable levels.

The new infrastructure also allows service centres to respond to 1.6 million monthly calls with predefined answers or by reporting operational status for breakdown follow-up.

"Slow response times could be caused by a large number of factors, such as processor performance, disk access, needed hardware or software upgrades, or files that are too large," said Norbert Distler, email consultant at BMW.

He explained that the measurement and evaluation of individual bottlenecks could lead to the appropriate fix.