Consolidated Communications Leverages Akorri
BalancePoint to Optimize IT Infrastructure and
Reduce Costs

Consolidated Communications, founded more than a century ago, is the 13th largest
independent local telephone company in the nation providing advanced communications
services to both residential and business customers in Illinois, Texas and Pennsylvania.
Consolidated Communications offers a wide range of services over its technologically
advanced IP-based network, including local and long distance telephone, Digital Phone,
High-Speed Internet access and Digital TV. The company’s related businesses complement
their core telephone business and include directory publishing and advertising services,
business systems, retail and wholesale operator services, call completion services and fully
 integrated telemarketing and fulfillment services.

CHALLENGE: Consolidated Communications had latency problems with
one of its financial applications

The IT team was initially struggling with a PeopleSoft financial application latency problem
and could not determine root cause, even after pooling all of their resources and staff to focus on
the problem. The company was undergoing a physical to virtual migration, with two virtual farms
growing daily, and needed to ensure infrastructure performance during the process. 

SOLUTION: Akorri's BalancePoint virtual infrastructure management

software determined  the cause

Dell pointed the company to Akorri, and once installed, Akorri’s Balance-Point software
determined the problem was at the application layer.  
“This was the first time we were able to look at our infrastructure holistically, from the application
layer to the storage area network (SAN). Before BalancePoint we didn’t have the right tools,”
said Matt Denman, Manager, Database/Unix Administration, Consolidated Communications

RESULTS:

  • Identified root cause of financial application latency
  • Reduced time and resources spent on troubleshooting
  • Ensured optimal IT performance during physical to virtual migration via daily performance baselining 
  • Improved load balancing and capacity planning Improved IT budget planning


“With BalancePoint, we have been able to dramatically reduce time and resources spent on
troubleshooting and better plan and organize our IT budget through gaining full visibility into
all components attached to our storage area network, easily pinpointing trouble areas,
successfully balancing our loads and monitoring and trending capacity and growth.”
Matt Denman, Manager, Database/Unix Administration, Consolidated Communications

ENVIRONMENT

BalancePoint virtual infrastructure management software
Server: 200 physical UNIX migrating to two virtual farms with approximately 60-80 virtual machines -
a number that is growing daily
Operating System: UNIX
Storage: 54 Terabytes Dell EqualLogic
Applications: All virtualized - Oracle and SQL server, Email, File systems

 

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