July 17, 2008 - KLIKON boosts competitive advantage and customer service offerings with advanced network management.

Business Impact Summary:

Business
KLIKON Solutions provides networking and infrastructure solutions and services to more than 100 clients across Australia. KLIKON specialises in working with small and medium enterprises with between 50 and 500 users, and is involved in an increasing number of managed service contracts.

Challenge
To take advantage of the growth in IT managed services, KLIKON needs to ensure that its offerings are competitive both in terms of cost and quality. To attract more clients to its network-based services, KLIKON needed to enhance its offerings and capabilities, which meant boosting its ability to monitor, manage and report on customer devices and networking environments.

Solution
KLIKON has deployed an integrated CA Network & Voice Management and CA Service Availability Management solution, which enables it to monitor 1,000-plus infrastructure devices at more than 200 customer sites. Device performance, application availability levels, incident alerts and customer reports are all co-ordinated via the solution, which has helped to minimise downtime.

Result
KLIKON has been able to differentiate itself in a competitive market and reach more clients with a new managed service. This will not only help to grow the company and its profits, but will also benefit KLIKON's clients by helping them increase efficiency while reducing costs.

Business

Delivering IT Solutions that meet evolving needs

More than 100 corporate and commercial organisations in Australia rely on KLIKON Solutions for critical IT support. The company has been providing networking and infrastructure solutions and services to clients for more than 10 years, and is about to expand its operations to New Zealand.

KLIKON specialises in working with small and medium enterprises with between 50 and 500 users, and takes a consiltative and holistic approach to delivering IT solutions. Its clients include Mission Australia, Hettich International and Tower Australia.

As well as assisting with application delivery, Microsoft software deployments and security initiatives, KLIKON is increasingly being charged with providing IT infrastructure managed services for its clients.

“We wanted to build on our existing managed services in the networking space, which meant providing our Network Operations Centre (NOC) with increased functionality.”

Simon Xistouris
Professional Services Director

Challenge

Taking advantage of new business opportunities

With companies facing growing competition for scarce technical skills, the demand for outsourced IT services is expected to increase. To take advantage of this growth, KLIKON needs to ensure thay its managed services are competitive both in terms of cost and quality.

David Abouhaidar, Sales Director for KLIKON, comments, “Our clients need IT solutions that take their organisation to the next level, providing them with increased agility and competitive advantage.“

As well as ensuring that its solutions meet client needs, KLIKON must maintain the efficiency and quality of its own operations — particularly IT. As Simon Xistouris, KLIKON’s Professional Services Director, explains, ”If we didn’t have good IT systems, we wouldn’t be in business. All our customer touch points — from sending a quote to responding to a service request — are reliant on technology. The greater our IT efficiency, the faster our customer response.”

IT also gives KLIKON the flexibility it needs to go to market with new customer offerings and differentiate its propositions from competitors, who are equally keen to capitalise on the growth in managed services.

To ensure that the company can stand out in this aggressive market, KLIKON needs to offer added value to its clients without considerable added cost. “We wanted to build on our existing managed services in the networking space, which meant providing our Network Operations Centre (NOC) with increased functionality,” adds Xistouris.

Solution

Centralised network management capabilities

To deliver this functionality, KLIKON deployed an advanced CA Network & Voice Management solution. “We wanted a tier one solution that could scale with our company and client base, and deliver superior infrastructure management and monitoring capabilities,” comments Abouhaidar.

After assessing four options from different vendors, KLIKON selected integrated CA Network & Voice Management and CA Service Availability Management solutions. KLIKON uses the CA solutions to monitor not only its own network and servers, but also around 1,000 infrastructure devices at more than 200 customer sites.

The implementation, which features CA eHealth® Network Performance Manager, CA SPECTRUM Network Fault Manager, and CA Unicenter® Network and Systems Management (CA Unicenter NSM) solutions, supports KLIKON throughout the IT management and monitoring process and helps minimise downtime for its clients. For example, device performance, application availability levels, incident alerts and customer reports are all seamlessly managed via the CA solutions.

By centralising its network management approach, KLIKON can offer — and meet — meaningful service level agreements (SLAs) with self-service reporting options. As Xistouris explains, “CA SPECTRUM allows our clients to create tailored reports via an online portal, which gives them greater flexibility and is a key differentiator for us.”

“CA SPECTRUM allows our clients to create tailored reports via an online portal, which gives them greater flexibility and is a key differentiator for us.“

Simon Xistouris
Professional Services Director

These reports supplement the monthly client overviews KLIKON generates using CA eHealth. These overviews are another new offering for KLIKON’s client base and detail the performance of every device monitored at a customer site. This data enables KLIKON to advise clients on what devices need replacing and to identify areas for service improvement.

“Over-utilisation is a major problem for our clients,” comments Abouhaidar. “Using CA eHealth, we can identify capacity issues before they impact business continuity and help clients prioritise their IT spend accordingly.”

Although device performance is important for ensuring overall IT efficiency — KLIKON’s customers are often more concerned about performance at an application level. As Xistouris explains, “Many of our clients rely on applications, such as email, for core business processes. They want to know that users across the company are getting the same level of performance. Using CA Unicenter NSM, we can provide this visibility and deliver an SLA-based service around core applications.”

Result

Better customer service and competitive advantage

Thanks to the increased visibility and functionality offered by the CA solutions, KLIKON has been able to launch a new network managed service to its clients.

Since going live in January 2007, six clients have already signed up to the service, which will be key to the future growth and profitability of KLIKON. Such is the company’s confidence in the new service that it has set an ambitious 400 percent growth target — and is on track to meet this goal by July 2008.

“The CA Network & Voice Management and CA Service Availability Management solutions have enabled us to deliver added value to our clients and differentiate our managed services offerings.”

David Abouhaidar
Sales Director

“The CA Network & Voice Management and CA Service Availability Management solutions have enabled us to deliver added value to our clients and differentiate our managed services offerings,” comments Abouhaidar. “We can now reach out to a wider audience, which will help us meet our sales target for this year.” As well as boosting KLIKON’s competitive advantage, the CA solutions have also benefited the company’s clients by:

• Increasing their efficiency
• Reducing the need for costly internal IT resources
• Facilitating intelligent investment decisions
• Aligning IT performance to business need

As Xistouris confirms, “Our customers would have to employ additional IT staff to carry out the processes that are automated by CA solutions and our NOC. By deploying CA Network & Voice Management and CA Service Availability Management solutions, we can not only help keep our clients’ overhead down but also ensure that we go to market at a competitive price point.”