KTSL Limited
PO Box 2637 Corsham
Wiltshire
SN13 0ZQ
UK

Tel: 0845 034 8000

KTSL Products & Services

To complement the work we do with solutions from BMC Software, KTSL also offer a range of products and services that have been delivered to help our customers get the best possible availability from their investment in IT systems.

Please select the following headings for additional information:

KTSL Service Assurance Solution

In today's uncertain business climate, senior IT managers are coming under increased pressure to extract the maximum value from their budgets.

Complex architectures and new business models mean that, to stay competitive, the entire enterprise must be managed proactively, delivering the right service at the right time and for the right price.

KTSL's Service Assurance Solution (SAS) provides a cost-effective method of meeting these requirements. SAS uses BMC Performance Manager, PATROL & BMC Performance Manager Express - an agent-less monitoring architecture that is quick, easy and cost-effective to deploy - that monitors the availability and key performance metrics of the servers, applications and databases that make up an organisation's business-critical services.

SAS pro-actively monitors the systems and notifies support staff of current and future problems. A wide range of management and operational reports are automatically generated, including Availability, Performance, Trend Analysis and many others. Regular Management Review Meetings are held to analyse the reports to ensure that the systems are working effectively.

SAS Reports

KTSL SAS reports are available for the following topics:

• Management Summary-summarises all of the separate reports
• Availability-review server, application or service availability & report on any significant observations or concerns.
• Events-ensure that PATROL is working effectively.
• Performance-review server, application or service performance & report on any significant observations or concerns.
• Exceptions-identifying parameters that have an exceptional amount of change.
• Trends-estimate of future performance and availability.
• Investigative Reviews-specific analysis requested by the customer
• Assets-review and track assets
• Status-summary reports on availability and capacity at certain times of day.
• PATROL Alarm Thresholds-gathers and recommends alarm thresholds
• Service Desk-report of incidents and configuration changes reported via the service or help desk.

SAS report of availability by application

Reports are available in a variety of formats and live via the web.

Benefits

• Monitor and alert for possible SLA non-compliance
  - Saves possible fines for non-compliance
• Pro-actively identifies potential system problems
  - Increased customer satisfaction
  - Reduce unplanned outages
• Quicker time to fix through improved problem identification
  - Reduce support costs
• Centralised administration & shared support resources
  - Reduce support costs
• Cost-effective monitoring of whole infrastructure with one solution
  - Improve service levels
  - Reduce support costs
• Centralised help desk integration
  - Reduce support costs
• Trend analysis enables informed hardware purchasing decisions and server consolidation
  - Reduce costs by purchasing the correct hardware at the right time
  - Defer purchases
  - Reduce licence costs
  - Reduce h/w maintenance costs
• Enables IT to focus on delivery of key Business Services
  - Increased customer satisfaction
• Enables IT to gain a better understanding of the status of the whole of the system
  - Minimise risks

KTSL Infrastructure Monitoring Service

Screenshot showing availability by service

IMS is a managed service hosted by KTSL that provides immediate value. No software installation is required on the monitored servers, which means that implementation is extremely rapid. IMS does not require dedicated hardware or a VPN. A small service is installed on a Windows server, co-existing with other applications, which transmits monitoring data to the high-availability KTSL IMS Server. Data transfer is over a secure 128-bit SSL-encrypted connection, ensuring safe and secure communications.

Screenshot showing real-time availability reports

Customer access is via a web-based portal where a variety of reports and charts are available. Events are raised by IMS if customer-defined thresholds are breached. Typically these are in the form of a diagnostic email.

What Does IMS Monitor?

• Windows servers
• UNIX & Linux servers
• Databases
• Web servers
• Web transactions
• Network devices
• Storage devices
• Ports
• Processes
• Windows event logs
• Text logs
• Custom parameters

Flexible Payment Options

IMS customers enjoy flexible payment terms, which provide all of the benefits without any capital investment. Customers may pay for the service monthly, quarterly or annually.

Benefits

• Improves quality of service (QoS) by monitoring service objectives
• Lowers system administration costs by providing graphical view of infrastructure problems
• Reduces system downtime through pro-active notification of system problems - in real time
• Improves management information through performance and availability reports
• Reduces risks by monitoring key elements of the infrastructure
• No capital investment

KTSL Capacity Planning Service

Do you know your systems weakest links? Which part of your system is closest to saturation? Where are those bottlenecks? What is the potential impact on Service Level Agreements?

Often customers do not have the in-house resources to make these predictions. Performance Assurance not only looks at current system performance but also models future performance.

Typical customer cases:

• Performance reporting and Capacity Planning are required but cannot be resourced or budgeted for internally
• Response time will be guaranteed in the next Service Level Agreement (SLA). What are the current response time figures? Can we predict new response time figures for given changes in user load, system upgrade, etc.
• An upgrade is planned. Will it provide the promised improvements?
• Using fewer servers but with more powerful processors will reduce application license fees. What is the predicted performance of the proposed configurations?
• Can the application servers be consolidated?
• System performance is occasionally poor. What is going on? What can be done to stabilise the situation? What upgrade would be most effective?

Obtaining the answers to these questions is far from easy. However, KTSL has developed a solution based on BMC Software's PATROL Perform tools to capture and accurately model the existing server performance workloads. Our highly experienced BMC-certified consultants analyse the raw data and make recommendations about current bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Using PATROL Predict allows us to help our customers make informed decisions about IT hardware investments.

Benefits

• Improved customer satisfaction through increased system performance
• Reduce hardware costs by extending the life of existing hardware and purchasing the right hardware at the right time
• Reduce system administration costs as KTSL invests in specialist consultants which means that you do not need to train your staff

Summary

KTSL Web Site Response Time Service

The service is based on BMC PATROL End to End Response Timer, which enables companies to determine the availability and measure the performance of business applications by simulating business transactions and monitoring response times from desktop environments. Key transactions are recorded and saved, then scheduled for periodic execution. Upon execution, PETE will automatically report application availability and response times and identify locations and transactions with response time degradation to assist in alerting and determining the cause of the problem.

The service provides important information about website performance, including:

• Availability
  - Is my application available?
• Performance
  - Is my application response time acceptable?
• What is my response time?
  - Quantifiable comparison of response times to those reported to the Help Desk
• Problem notification
  - Tell operations there is a problem

KTSL IT Infrastructure Library Services

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of IT Service Management Best Practice. ITIL is used in many hundreds of operations around the world where quality of service is a key requirement. ITIL consists of a series of books that provide guidance on the provision of quality IT services and the facilities to support the IT function. ITIL is working closely with British Standards Institution on BS15000, which will be based around the ITIL standards. More details may be found at www.itil.co.uk

KTSL builds its IT support services around ITIL Best Practice. We also work with the local itSMF organisations and have presented at a number of seminars about this topic.

Our ITIL-based services include:

• Raising Awareness
  - Service Management
  - ITIL processes
  - Assessment of current situation
• ITIL Foundation Training
  - In-depth, in-house training course, leading to the ITIL Foundation Certificate
• ITIL Planning Workshop
  - Programme management
  - Organisation
  - Vision / Priorities
  - Benchmark / Gap Analysis / KPI Measures
  - Process implementation plans
  - Doing it!
  - Reviewing
• Key Staff Training
  - Practitioner
  - Service Manager's Certificate
• Best Practice Monitoring and Assistance (quarterly/half yearly)
  - Planning
  - Interim programme management
  - Process consultancy
  - Document process
  - Roles / Responsibilities
  - Interfaces
  - Pilot, etc.
  - Review
• Services Based around ITIL
  - Key Performance Indicator reporting (daily/weekly/monthly)
  - KPI review sessions
  - Customisation
  - Deployment and integration to other services