Aloha Cabled Observatory

JA Ishikawa Densan Center - NetCrunch Success Story

Japan

www.is-ja.jp/center/

“In addition to being cost-effective, it it is so simple and easy to create and maintain maps and atlas of monitored nodes in our network. Before NetCrunch, had to manually set up machines, and this tedious work is not necessary anymore.”

Tatsuhiro Arai
Operation team staff

Key benefits:

  • Easy monitoring configuration
  • Cost effectiveness
  • Simple operation

Ishikawa Densan Center
Ishikawa Densan Center

Challenge

JA Ishikawa Densan monitors a network of JA Group Ishikawa. It is a very important infrastructure for prefectural sub-system of nation-wide JA group, where many mission-critical applications such as custom-developed prefectural sub-system of JA group, as well as SAP are running. Also digital sales record systems are being used by JA group members in Ishikawa Prefecture on everyday basis.

There are approximately 600 network devices, most of them are of Fujitsu brand, and about 80% of them are monitored. Besides these network devices, there are PCs, printers, ATM machines - numbers goes up to nearly 3000, and are placed in their 220 prefectural offices - are connected to the network. All of them are running to support day-to-day JA Group Ishikawa activities that cover procurement processes, payment transactions, inventory management, logistics, and many other related business aspects. The size of the operation team of JA Ishikawa Densan Center is quite modest, only 9 staff, and they are responsible for taking care of this vast network.

Solution

AdRem NetCrunch was a perfect match for the needs of the operation team of JA Ishikawa Densan Center. They are responsible for monitoring the JA Group Ishikawa network and systems, to make sure its performance and traffic volume is fine and to avoid any possible network problems.

With the previous network monitoring solution that JA Ishikawa Densan Center was using before deployment of NetCrunch, they had to do tedious setups at multiple local machines, and maintenance of monitored nodes was not easy.

However, introduction of NetCrunch has mitigated this aspect, and NetCrunch has proved that it can offer the same level of service and features with much more attractive price. It was a great value for the operation team who has to cover wide range of responsibilities. According to Mr. Tatsuhiro Arai, of the operation team of JA Ishikawa Densan Center, the operation of server monitoring and monitored nodes has become much easier with intuitive visualization and GUI of NetCrunch. Mr. Arai says that creating maps and atlas with vast number of network devices located in many locations and shops has become very simple with NetCrunch.

About JA Ishikawa Densan Center

JA Ishikawa Densan Center is a system management company established in 1977, and based in Kanazawa –prefectural capital of Ishikawa Prefecture , with the main business line as commissioned development/operation/maintenance of various digital systems, and network/internet related business, hosting servers and network devices to assist JA Group Ishikawa Cooperatives business and activities.

Literally, JA stands for Japan and agriculture. And JA (Japan Agricultural Cooperatives) is an organization that conducts business activities based on the participation and collective efforts of its members (most of them are farmers). It collectively purchases the materials necessary for agricultural production and collectively markets agricultural products. It also involves in a wide range of business enterprises that assist farmers, such as credit services, mutual insurance services and others.

JA Group Ishikawa is one of their prefectural-level JA federations in Ishikawa prefecture (whose size is about half of Cyprus island)—in the northern coast of Honshu main island of Japan, facing Japan sea, where as many as over 68,000 farmers are engaged in agriculture.