TMK Group Enhances Network Management with Entuity

Overview

With over 30 manufacturing sites in Russia, the United States, Canada, Romania, Oman and Kazakhstan, TMK has the world’s largest steel pipe production capacity, as well as the largest sales revenues for oil tubular goods. This makes them the leading supplier of tubular products for the oil and gas industry. TMK supplies products to more than 80 countries worldwide. A few of their clients include Shell, AGIP, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, Lukoil and other global oil and gas companies.

Company Highlights

• Company Size: 30 manufacturing sites around the world
• Countries Supported: Canada, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia, United States
• Network Management Software: Entuity network management

Business Needs

As you might imagine, keeping a global enterprise network operating at peak efficiency is no easy task. TMK’s IT organization was the driver of researching and implementing a new system to more effectively manage their WAN network. They saw the need for increasing the satisfaction of TMK’s end-user experience, decreasing the number of incidents and shortening the recovery time spent on rectifying network issues.

The TMK IT team had very specific requirements for creating their new network management ecosystem. TMK wanted to move away from the inefficient data collection and correlation methodology of using multiple, separate network management tools. They decided to look for a network management solution that offered IT infrastructure monitoring with a single, all-in-one, integrated product. The challenge of managing over 400 devices worldwide brought additional requisites that they wanted from their new solution:

• Topology Maps of their entire IT infrastructure with data on its operational state and utilization based on different usage protocols for particular TMK locations.
• Event and incident management capabilities that include filtering, multiple administrator usage, and importantly, the ability to set up custom event notifications for specific devices.
• A strong root cause analysis feature for understanding and analyzing their network’s activities.

“We had a very long list of requirements that were absolutely necessary for TMK to move ahead with a stronger network management system”, states Sergey Korablev, TMK IT Director. “It was just as critical for our IT organization to have an out-of-the-box solution that would minimize the amount of time we had to spend with deployment and support services in order to get the product up and running.”

The Final Selection: Entuity Network Management

Entuity met all the TMK requirements and its features were verified during a two-month proof of concept arranged by their local IT supplier, Unicorns, an Entuity Authorized Partner in Moscow. Due to the successful pilot, TMK selected Entuity as their network management solution.

“During the pilot program, there were a few devices that were unique to us and they were quickly added to the Entuity software and put under management. Through this exercise we received dedicated assistance from our local partner Unicorns, as well as a fast response by Entuity support. This gave us the confidence that we were making the right decision in choosing Entuity,” says Korablev.

The TMK IT team has discovered over time that many of the Entuity features are making a big difference in evolving the efficiency, proactiveness and accuracy of their network management.

“They especially have found that the incident event-based mail notifications, automatic topology map generation, dynamic thresholds and friendly and clear UI’s all have helped them understand network behavior and have enabled them to proactively review activities before they become problems,” says Boris Goldshteyn, Unicorns General Manager. Entuity has helped the IT organization solidly improve the end-user experience producing higher satisfaction levels throughout the entire company.

What’s more, TMK has significantly reduced the time needed in executing routine day-to-day tasks. All of the automation Entuity provides has resulted in an unexpected benefit—freeing up the IT staff to tackle worthwhile projects. The TMK IT team also uses the many Entuity customer resources to keep them up to date on the latest new features, product releases and technical presentations. The team continually strives to keep network management moving forward. Entuity gives TMK an enterprise-class solution to do just that and as a by-product, it gives them more time to implement IT activities to support their company’s continued success.

“During the pilot program, there were a few devices that were unique to us and they were quickly added to the Entuity software and put under management. Through this exercise we received dedicated assistance from our local partner Unicorns, as well as a fast response by Entuity support. This gave us the confidence that we were making the right decision in choosing Entuity.”
– Sergey Korablev, IT Director, TMK