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CERN Selects SPECTRUM Integrity

Aprisma Management Technologies Inc, a Gores Technology Group Company, announced that the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland has chosen Aprisma's SPECTRUM Integrity to ensure the performance and reliability of its network and key servers infrastructure. A high-availability, multi-Gigabit backbone soon to be upgraded to 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology supports experimental data collection and processing on 27,000 computers for 6,500 visiting researchers from 500 universities, 2,500 employees, and over 20,000 annual visitors. CERN has also deployed SPECTRUM's OneClick user interface to accelerate finding and fixing IT infrastructure problems while dramatically reducing training requirements.

"It is impossible to manage a network of this scale and complexity without the best service management solution," said Jean Michel Jouanigot, CERN Campus network manager. "Only SPECTRUM is capable of doing the job."

CERN has always been a very dynamic IT environment with over 16,000 annual moves, adds, and changes to support the activities of various international research teams from more than 80 countries. Operated like an ISP network services portfolio, CERN's network infrastructure is managed with the primary goal to ensure quality of connectivity and computing services. In 2007, CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC), valued at 4,000 million euros or $4 billion, will become operational as the world's largest particle accelerator facility. The network capacity required for the processing of the generated experimental data will exceed 2 terabits-per-second.

"SPECTRUM has the power and flexibility we need to manage this very dynamic network," said Nikos Trikoupis, CERN network management engineer. "We would be blind without its port level root cause analysis to show us when we have a loss of redundancy or bandwidth performance issues. SPECTRUM is a crucial part of our daily operation that we have fully integrated with our workflow procedures and Oracle data warehouse."

CERN uses the OneClick user interface architecture for anytime, anywhere access to critical network performance information. With less than an hour of training, OneClick enabled CERN's network operations staff to be more proactive, while troubleshooting problems faster through its well organized, compact interface.

"You can OneClick from home to evaluate a situation remotely over a dial- up connection," said Trikoupis. "It's amazing to see the 100 percent positive reaction of users in front of OneClick -- they just jump on it."

In choosing to standardize on SPECTRUM and OneClick, CERN expressed continued confidence in Aprisma. "You can see the enthusiasm and excitement in every area at Aprisma," said Olaf van der Vossen, network services and operation section leader at CERN. "Everyone is keen on improving the product, and really listening to customers. We are very pleased with the level of support we get from Aprisma."