It allows us to have a quick, upfront view of our multiple data centers. We have multiple connections to hundreds of customers; and it provides us with a quick dashboard look at issues we might be having; bottlenecks we might be having; and things that might go wrong in our network without us needing to dig through endless screens of issues to get to the root of the problem.
It makes things faster when we have our network operations center. They can look at their dashboards that we've created for them, and they can see problems immediately. We can catch a problem before it really starts impacting the customer. It enables our network engineers to look deeper into the source of the problem after alerts are raised. So it's quick, it's fast, and it gets things done. We can get past a problem before it becomes a real problem.
What's missing is stuff that they're already putting on the roadmap: the quick dashboards that they're building; the ability to create dashboard quickly; for example, with ADA and NFA, has been pretty amazing.
They are starting to support additional products and every time we come out here, and every time there is a product release, something new is added to it. Honestly, CA should just keep doing what they're doing. I'm sure there's going to be stuff out there we haven't thought of; and I hope they figure it out first.
Stability has never been an issue. That's one of the things that's so great about CA products is that we've never had that kind of issue. We don’t have servers crashing on us for CA products. We're not dealing with issues with connections or whatever. CA just works. There are no stability problems whatsoever. So it's fantastic.
Things work. I get up in the morning, I open the console, and it's there. I don't have to worry about it.
We have multiple large data centers and we've never had any issue getting those data centers hooked into CA. If we have to connect to something with our ADA or NFA products, we find it: it's there. We don't have any problems with size or scalability. It's quick, and if we need to bump it up a little bit, we can do that as well.
We use technical support all the time. In fact, they just resolved an issue for us this week with a name tag for IP SLA products in Cisco. The nice thing about them is that they're so quick and responsive. When we have a problem, they will get on it, and they will find us an answer, usually quickly. They come back and fix problems and bugs, so that it worked great. Their technical support has always been fantastic.
Actually, I was not involved in the initial setup. I inherited an old mature system. It seems to be straightforward. I worked with a guy who did set the product up initially, and he had no issues with it. But again, I'm now working on a mature system, so I haven't done that yet.
Get CA involved up front. Let them help you. CA has done this for years. Let them help you with the things that you might not even realize that you don't know. Let them help implement it with you because they're going to know some of the bumps and hassles and pitfalls that are out there. That's what my partner did before I came onboard; and he said it was as smooth as pie. So, that would be my advice.
