Project overview

Centralizing monitoring for nearly300 sites in France and Europe

Having a single entry point to control the indicators

Extending the analysis and monitoring

Providing indicators and reportingreadable to business users and topmanagement

Solution:

Centreon EMS (*)

Real time activity monitoring

More efficiency and responsivenessfor IT teams

Better communication with businessusers (indicators)

IT Department’s value proposal highlighted (reporting)

(*) Centreon EMS (ex CES Complete) includes Centreon Open Source, Centreon EPP, Centreon MAP, Centreon BAM, Centreon MBI and technical support.

Business challenges Client benefits

Thanks to an enlargedand accessible IT monitoring system,the Pierre & VacancesCenter Parcs Groupspeaks the Businesslanguage

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CASE STUDY

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On a daily basis, the Pierre &Vacances - Center Parcs Group ITDepartment manages and monitorsnetwork devices , servers andapplications from nearly 300 sites,all interconnected and operatedin heterogeneous environments(AS 400, Windows, Linux, etc.). “ Wehave serv ice commitment withour internal customers, spreadover different sites. In high season,to ensure qual ity and customersat isfact ion, we cannot faceunavailability of the IS ” explainsSébast ien Noulot , DataCentermanager. Three years ago, thedecision was taken to centralize allold monitoring solutions with oneand unique solut ion, as saysSébastien Noulot: “ Center Parcs siteswere monitored with a proprietarysolution and other sites with Nagios,initially appreciated for its opensource approach but not enoughgraphical and too technical to suitmore longer our projects. ” Indeed,the team wanted to implement andextend IT monitoring to bettercontrol its activity and improvecommunication with non-technical

users, especially on holiday siteswhere no IT staff is present.

The challenge was to find a solutionwith Nagios advantages but alsouser-friendly, easy to configure andto use. “ Centreon EMS provides agreat number of functions that meetour IT monitoring needs.

Furthermore, the graphical approachand additional modules for businessintelligence (Centreon MBI), graphicalviews (Centreon MAP) and activitymonitoring (Centreon BAM) werehighly appreciated. All these modulesallow us to go far beyond the meremonitoring ” recal ls Sébast ienNoulot. By increasing the volume ofdata collected, the monitoring teamalso wants to better use theinformation to produce and delivernew readable indicators.

Another feature was also veryattractive: the command line modulethat automates many of thetreatments and creates an interfacebetween the monitoring tool and theCMDB.

With 7.5 million customers spread across 280 sites

in Europe, the Pierre & Vacances - Center Parcs

Group has become the leading proximity tourism

operator in Europe within the last 50 years.

To monitor its Information System, improve

communication with users and optimize the activity

monitoring for all Group entities, the IT Department

relies on the Centreon EMS solution since 2014.

A very satisfactory first step allowed performance

gains thanks to a very relevant data collection and

the sites monitoring centralization. Meanwhile, the

monitoring team focuses on data visualization and

reporting tool implementation to strengthen its

communication, image and efficiency to business

users.

We were lookingfor a centralized IT

monitoring solution, ableto provide a broadervision to analyze andmanage activity while

communicatingbetter

Centreon ability tointerface with our

CMDB - thanks to itscommand line module

and its strong scalability - makes a

real difference!

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In practice, the solution has beendeployed in less than 6 months.Easy to use and scalable, Centreonalready monitors a l l networkequipment, servers and part ofthe applications. “ We integrate anew plugin on average every twomonths. The simplicity of Centreondeployment is very valuable. TheCentreon pre-packaged Plugins(Plugin Packs) industrialize the time-to-monitoring of new equipment ” saysSébastien Noulot. “ Using graphicaltools or command lines according toour needs is a real asset. In addition,Centreon TechSupport Team is veryresponsive and attentive, findingquickly adapted solutions to each ofour requests. ”

Since its implementation, the solutionhas simplified a lot of treatments andthe number of indicators increasedfrom 700 to 10,000. “ We createindicators in the CMDB that we pushin Centreon via a single repository, incompliance with our ITIL approach, ”says Sébastien Noulot. “ We checkmany more elements, with greatergranularity. Data collection is vitalto subsequent ly operate andexpand the analysis and controlcapabilities. ”

Teams are more responsive andefficient in an everyday basis,anomaly resolution time is reduced,and above all, data is used tomonitor ing information anddecision-making purposes. Threetypes of users operate IT monitoring,as Sébastien Noulot states: “ theoperations engineering defines themonitoring indicators and createsscripts for integrating new plugins.The operation controls the indicatorsand handles the monitoring. Externalusers, such as operational or topmanagement, access monitoringdata through reporting and graphicalviews. ” This point is particularlycritical in the company's monitoringstrategy. With graphic and syntheticviews (created with Centreon MAP),

on-site users identify IT outages morequickly, know that their problem istaken into account and sometimescan deal directly with the problem incooperation with the technicalsupport. As a result, it brings moref luidi ty and transparency introubleshooting and less calls due tobetter communication betweenservices.

By the same time, the Monitoringteam is working on the implementationof Centreon BAM and Centreon MBIin order to develop communicationtools for the company's otherservices.“ Centreon BAM allows us totranslate IT monitoring indicators intoan applicative and business point ofview, to make them more readablefor non-IT users, ” says SébastienNoulot. With the implementation ofCentreon MBI, the team will be ableto quickly create, automate and pro-vide IT monitoring reports based onmonitor ing data histor izat ion,designed to financial and topmanagement. This approach allowsdemonstrating the relevance of theIT Department choices, bettermonitoring business activities andanticipating all human, financial andtechnical needs.

From 700 to 10,000indicators,

we expanded ouranalysis and

monitoring capabilities to be able

to provide readableand relevant

indicators to three different user

profiles. “

”

With Centreon EMS’sreporting and BAM

tools, we align ITmonitoring to

business activities.Information is

open-plan, transparency and

communication are improved and the

value proposal of theIT Department is

clearly perceived. “

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AboutThe Pierre & Vacances - Center Parcs Group

The Pierre & Vacances - Center Parcs Group, established and chaired byGerard Bremond, develops and operates environmentally respectfulinnovative concepts of vacation and leisure, in order to provide the bestEuropean destinations to the sea, in the mountains, in the countryside orin the heart of cities.

Created in 1967, Pierre & Vacances - Center Parcs Group is the leadingproximity tourism operator in Europe. With its complementary brands -Pierre & Vacances, Maeva, Center Parcs, Sunparks and Aparthotels Adagio- the Group welcomes 7.5 million customers in a tourist park of nearly50,000 apartments and homes, located in 300 sites in Europe.

Website: www.groupepvcp.com

For more information to try or buy, visit: www.centreon.com

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