JLT Group, the international group of risk specialists and employee benefits consultants, is completely overhauling its power, environmental and security monitoring across over 100 offices in 33 countries.
JLT employs 7,600 staff after growing through acquisition, and adding new offices and a diverse range of IT equipment in comms rooms across the UK and overseas.
Many of these sites are without local IT staff but they need to be maintained to ensure reliable IT and communication infrastructures. Issues such as power supply outages and air conditioning failures were becoming difficult to quickly spot and rectify.
Even at sites protected by UPS (uninterruptible power supply) it was difficult to ensure the reliability of batteries with little service histories and infrequent failover testing.
To resolve this situation and with JLT still growing, JLT embarked on a multi-year programme to upgrade and centralise both power protection and environmental monitoring around the world.
The company selected Ecl-ips as a datacentre, environmental and security monitoring specialist to deliver the programme, using Schneider/APC technology.
Ritchie Coombs, technical services manager at JLT, said: "Ecl-ips had the capability to provide 24-hour remote and next day-on site engineer responses, which is critical in meeting our service delivery requirements."
As an APC Premier partner Ecl-ips has deployed Smart-UPS, NetBotz visual security and environmental monitoring, plus various smart PDU's all controlled through a StruxtureWare management platform hosted by Ecl-ips.
The StruxtureWare Data Centre Expert system allows both the JLT facilities team and its own help desk to monitor equipment in comms rooms across the UK and overseas.
The multi-vendor solution provides real-time monitoring of power, cooling, and security, and offers instant fault notification and escalation to enable quick assessment and resolution of critical infrastructure events.
Working with Ecl-ips, JLT has created a schedule of site upgrades and failover tests to bring all sites under the new system. At certain sites Ecl-ips installed NetBotz monitoring equipment, which also includes CCTV capabilities, to ensure the security of vulnerable comms rooms, particularly at shared sites.
Coombs said: "We have more visibility over the power and environmental conditions at each site, and with the addition of video we are instantly alerted if somebody has gone into a comms room without permission."
He said: "All alerts are also routed to our mobile devices, which allows us to have a lighter touch, smaller and more mobile team that can remotely carry out many of the common remedies, such as power cycling, without a time consuming site visit."