Virsae’s VSM takes a bite out of manufacturer support costs at Monster

VSM’s ability to detect unused capacity helps the job listing giant save thousands of dollars

Monster is a global leader in connecting people and jobs. Every day, Monster makes meaningful human connections that advance lives and strengthen businesses by helping individuals find better jobs and employers find the best talent.

For more than 20 years, Monster has worked to transform the recruiting industry. Today, the company leverages advanced technology using intelligent digital, social and mobile solutions, including the flagship website Monster.com®, Monster’s innovative app, and a vast array of products and services.

The environment spans physical and virtual servers across multiple data centers and includes various Avaya applications such as Session Manager, System Manager, Application Enablement Services (AES) and Call Management System (CMS), as well as 3rd party applications which tie into their call center environment.

As Monster continues to evolve as a business, the company constantly evaluates opportunities to reduce costs. With their Avaya support contract nearing a renewal, Monster turned to their Avaya business partner, intlx Solutions, for assistance.

Easing the Workload

Monster recognized they had more licenses and trunks than needed, but felt they required additional data that would allow them to make key capacity decisions. Since Monster was already relying on Virsae Service Management (VSM) to assist them with daily management of their Avaya environment, Steve Robitaille, Account Executive for intlx Solutions, suggested they leverage the capability of other modules from VSM to help them get the data they needed.

Data = Decision Making

Through adding VSM’s Configuration and Capacity Manager modules to their arsenal, Monster quickly received a holistic picture of their Avaya environment. This enabled Monster to review past system resource usage and identify excess capacity for features like station licenses, agent licenses and excess trunk capacity.

Eliminating excess licenses and carrier circuits within their environment, based on solid data provided by VSM, helped remove doubt during the decision-making process.

“Whenever you talk about cutting licenses or trunking within your environment, there’s always some concern about reducing too much, as well as the cost to get that capacity back if miscalculated,’” said Neal Anderson, Senior Director of Network Operations for Monster.

“But with the data we received from VSM’s Configuration and Capacity Modules, we felt confident our numbers were right.”

Big savings… and more

Eliminating unused licenses helped Monster slash its annual support contract and streamline the number of ISDN PRI circuits required throughout their footprint, delivering additional monthly savings.

But more than simply cost savings, VSM continues to be a critical platform in helping Monster’s telephony team manage the Avaya system which supports over 2300 users.

VSM’s operational use

Day-to-day, Monster relies on VSM dashboards to observe and fine-tune their Avaya environment.

“Dashboards help our team triage issues much faster and focus our time where it counts,” said Gary McMahon, Senior Telecommunications Engineer for Monster.

“The dashboards extend beyond Communication Manager to other Avaya systems, including both the AES and CMS,” he said. “A quick glance will confirm that the AES links are up, messages are flowing, and the necessary services supporting Salesforce click-to-call functions are up and running.”

Monster also trusts VSM to back up their Avaya configurations.

“VSM takes the worry out of backups,” said McMahon. “In a matter of minutes, we had all of our Avaya data backed up to the cloud. As far as I know, this simply isn’t possible with other tools currently on the market.”

Future

As Monster’s environment evolves, they will continue to rely on VSM to help them manage and make decisions within their Avaya environment.

“The next big step is looking at moving to the cloud,” said Anderson. “Having a platform like VSM at our disposal will be critical to accessing current and historical data on our environment that will help us through the evaluation process.”

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About intlx Solutions

Founded by engineers, intlx Solutions strives to provide only highly skilled engineers who truly understand the technology surrounding virtualization, security, networking, and unified communications. Our mission is to consult and guide customers by aligning business objectives with the right solution to maximize technology as a driving force within the business. Learn more at www.intlxsolutions.com

Virsae’s cloud-based service, Virsae Service Management (VSM), brings new levels of insight to the real-time performance of multi-vendor applications, providing customers with the visibility to minimize risk, manage cost, and perform at their very best.