Success Stories

Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY)

Challenge:
Gain network visibility without sacrificing real-time performance.

Solution:
Purchase and install SwitchMonitor network-wide.  

Result:
A solution to remotely monitor and gain network performance visibility of VNSNY staff located in NYC Hospitals. 

Headline:
Network Health and Human Health Go Hand-in-Hand at VNSNY

When the nation's largest not-for-profit home health care agency installed PathSolutions' SwitchMonitor product, the IS team gained the ability to remotely support the organization's 2,450 registered nurses.

Having a smooth-running network is especially important at Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) because the nursing staff works remotely and requires optimal connectivity.

"SwitchMonitor has saved the VNSNY team valuable time," said Art Fields, manager of the telecommunications network.  "It's important that the agency's nurses have the ability to connect with the two core data centers when using their digital pen tablets."

How VNSNY Settled on PathSolutions' SwitchMonitor

Prior to installing SwitchMonitor, the VNSNY IS team was often unable to perform their duties in a timely fashion.  IS experts were forced to troubleshoot remote connection problems while remaining on site.

 "Two years ago we had no visibility into the network at all except looking up statistical information," said Edward Lee, senior network engineer, who implemented SwitchMonitor with fellow-worker Fields. "Instead of being reactive, SwitchMonitor helped us to be proactive by generating an e-mail report everyday to tell us where to look for problems. From there we could go back and look at a port before it became troublesome."

Shortly after joining VNSNY, Lee was assigned the task of researching forward-thinking network monitoring tools. The IS team was well-aware of the importance of staying one step ahead of potential network glitches.

 VNSNY evaluated several off-the-shelf solutions, but none of those was effective at meeting the team's  lofty goals. "Those tools were either resource intensive or gave up/down port information," Lee said. "The bottom line is that they failed to run as consistently as SwitchMonitor while collecting historical details."

The Need for Seamless Efficiency During Growth

Fields and Lee say they are sold on SwitchMonitor because of its effectiveness and scalability.

"As we're growing we want to stay efficient," Fields said. "SwitchMonitor simplifies things. We have a up-to-the-minute status page that shows our network. We can access that information from the office, home, on the road — and even on a PDA if we want to."

There are over 350 campus network devices and things are only expanding. "These sites contain nurse stations where the workers can pull sensitive patient information from the mainframe and push back their information.  To support this user volume, network visibility is important.

So What Makes SwitchMonitor Special?

With all of the T1 & Frame-relay lines connecting various spokes to the hub, it's critical that SwitchMonitor be able to consistently:

  • Monitor all of the network interfaces
  • Remain maintenance free
  • Capture historical data
  • Be easy to use

"SwitchMonitor is a service that you just leave on and run," Lee said. "I have network data at my fingertips that goes back 450 days since I turned the application on. SwitchMonitor tells us how many ports are being used and it tells me which link on a particular port is being highly utilized. This is all very important because VOIP traffic are real-time and we need to know how a link is being utilized."

Learning how to use SwitchMonitor was simple. "We downloaded the trial version and upgraded it, which was painless. I didn't lose any of the information that already existed," Lee said, adding SwitchMonitor is especially important when he brings up new sites and is looking for potential trouble spots.

With no onsite training necessary there is really no downside ― including price. "In terms of functionality the price is great," Lee said. "My manager thought it was a great buy for the functionality provided."

With almost no support required, Lee said he is hard-pressed to think of a reason that his fellow system administrators shouldn't use SwitchMonitor.

"You have to try SwitchMonitor in order to believe it," he said. "It gives us a god-like control over the network."

Customers

Reasons

Why Total Network Visibility is a Must Have

Why MOS Scores Aren't Enough

Learn more

Testimonials

"PathSolutions Network Monitor proved its worth on the very first day, and has been a tremendous asset to improving our network health. We would highly recommend it to others based on our experience with it."

Helen L. Dotson
Project Manager
Dow Chemical