Notification software improves business continuity of critical IT systems

Potsdam, Germany, 14 April, 2010: Derdack (www.derdack.com), mobile messaging platforms and enterprise notification software today announced that the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the world’s most productive astronomical observatory, has selected message master® Enterprise Alert to increase availability for critical IT services.  The installation in Santiago, Chile will add automated, mobile notification capabilities to existing network monitoring functionality provided by WhatsUp.

Andrew Wright, Network Specialist, ESO said, “We knew that message master® Enterprise Alert was already successfully integrated with WhatsUp at our headquarters near Munich, Germany.  The latest version of Derdack’s software has powerful features for notification automation, in particular two-way closed loop notifications, the ability to automatically escalate alerts, assignment of ownership of alerts, and failover capabilities. It was a straightforward decision to roll out the software to our Chile operation. During the implementation I have been very impressed with Derdack’s highly responsive service and support.”

ESO operates a Support Centre in Santiago which is connected to the telescope installations in Chile's Atacama region and 600 km and 1000 km north of Santiago.  The observatories rely on the IT network and consistent internet access to transfer huge amounts of scientific data at a very high rate back to its offices in Europe.  If there is a technical fault such as a server failure or interruption in internet access, ESO’s WhatsUp software would send a ‘fire and forget’ email notification to support engineers.  However if the problem also affected email access or the network itself then there was no way to send these alerts.

message master® Enterprise Alert will be implemented with an external GSM modem in Santiago. Hence, it can function independently of the monitored network or Internet access and can alert IT staff on any failure of these services. It is interfaced with a local installation of WhatsUp.  Once an alert has been generated by WhatsUp, message master® Enterprise Alert will send a text message to the appropriate support engineer’s mobile phone and track delivery.  In the event of delivery failure, delay or non-response, message master® Enterprise Alert will automatically escalate the alert to the next available team member. 

A number of future business uses for message master® Enterprise Alert have already been identified.  These include communicating day to day tasks to field based engineers and potential integration with weather monitoring systems for early notification of adverse conditions such as electrical storms which could damage sensitive equipment.

Wright commented, “We chose message master® Enterprise Alert as it is a future proof and comprehensive notification solution that offers the flexibility and scalability that will enable us to leverage our investment into other areas of our business in addition to IT monitoring.  We will improve critical service uptime and improve continuity of our scientific operations.”

Matthes Derdack, Managing Director of Derdack added, “Constant availability of internet access is vital to the continuing operation of the observatories.  By introducing network-independent notification capabilities, ESO will gain the ability to recover far more quickly from Internet and IT issues that affect service uptime and data transfer operations. We are proud to support the scientific operations of one of the major astronomical research facilities in the world.”