IT Operations Management

Conxx Engineering's expert configuration and use of GridObserver can monitor significantly more network traffic than the competition to provide rich, deep, and broad data. Actionable intelligence is provided through operational predictability and real event correlation to identify where anomalies happen and to provide a precise location and layer in the OSI stack. Deployed in hours (not weeks or months), the network is fully mapped with automation capabilities of key networking tasks, including configuration of critical and complex network elements such as MPLS Routers and IPSec Tunnels.

Case Study: Commonwealth Edison Co.

Size: 11,200 Employees

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Industry: Electric Utility

Customers: 3.8 Million Electric Customers

Challenges

• Network device configurations can take days of expensive engineering time using device manufacturer toolsets
• Creating complex configurations manually results in resource bottlenecks in the deployment schedule
• Manual configurations have up to 10% error rate, resulting in rework and ancillary network issues
• New network device deployments frequently require re-configuration of adjacent devices
• Human error causes more data loss than malicious attacks

Solution

• Conxx Engineering services utilizes decades of experience in network device configuration and deployment, along with GridObserver to model and generate the configurations and deployment impacts, eliminating configuration and deployment errors
• Conxx Engineering services go beyond a standard mail-merge configuration generation. Configuration templates are customized to each device configuration and incorporate network device adjacencies, while ensuring security requirements and settings are consistent with corporate standards

Results

• An average three-day device configuration time (requiring a network engineer) was reduced to thirty minutes
• Configuration errors were eliminated
• GO Configuration Automation saved at least $2,400 per router configuration; more than $625,000 over the life of the project using this feature alone

Discussion

Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) rolled out over 260 new MPLS routers to further expand and support their smart grid network.

The router configurations were complex, requiring a skilled engineer an average of three working days to generate and validate the configuration file per router using the hardware manufacturer’s toolset. At an estimated $100 per configuration hour, a single router cost $2,400 in labor alone. In addition, 10% of the router configurations contained programming errors.

Conxx Engineering was able to configure an MPLS router in minutes, saving ComEd an estimated $600,000. In addition, every configuration was error free. The automated configuration toolset in GridObserver also included the code required for the interfaces on each upstream device to complete the implementation of each new router.

GridObserver® (GO) models the network and is aware of all relationships between network devices. Using this AIOps modeling technology, GO is capable of automatically creating router configuration files in a matter of minutes as well as needed configuration changes for adjacent devices, error free, every time.

GO dramatically reduced the deployment schedule for ComEd’s router upgrade and expansion project, ensuring rapid and error free deployments. Project staff were assigned to more pressing needs. GridObserver was able to easily generate a high return on investment.

Network device configurations have up to a 10% error rate after many engineering hours spent. GridObserver’s unique network modeling and device relationship toolset can help you expedite deployments while saving costly headcount.

Interested? Contact us today to get the conversation started.