PayPoint adds monitoring to transactions

Payment collection network gets extra management software

Payment collection company PayPoint has introduced monitoring software to its server environment to improve the reliability of its systems.

The organisation, which processes payments in shops on behalf of 400 companies including British Gas and BT, is adding the software as an extension of a server consolidation project that has eliminated downtime.

‘Our transaction processing was originally done offline,’ said PayPoint IT operations manager Mike Holden. ‘Then we bought software for the e-mobile top-up service we launched a couple of years ago, which needed to run on a server cluster.’

This clustered configuration was expensive and complex to manage, and resulted in configuration issues, says Holden.

The company now runs six Stratus servers grouped in two sets of three, running Postilion transaction processing software from specialist vendor S1.

Having had a stable server configuration for some time, PayPoint has gone live with SmartPack monitoring software from Stratus, to help ensure that systems stay up and running.

‘System availability is critical to our business,’ said Holden. ‘The monitoring software will be an important component that allows us to meet availability and service levels with our clients. It will complement the infrastructure and services we provide.’