Case Study: Visualizing IT Infrastructure

One of the biggest challenges facing enterprise IT teams is the scaling up, in terms of size and sophistication, of IT systems and infrastructure to meet the complexities of modern-day computing.

Introduction

Organizations are now completely reliant on complex global IT systems and cloud-based applications, requiring fast and efficient services with minimal disruption or downtime.

Our customer helps organizations meet these needs by providing a cloud-based SaaS platform that unites, streamlines and automates IT operations, asset and service management.

By focusing on innovation and usability, this company has gained a reputation for being one of the most disruptive in enterprise IT – rising from start-up to a globally recognized brand in under a decade.

The problem

In early 2013, our customer approached the team that built KeyLines – our graph visualization toolkit. They wanted to enhance their IT infrastructure management offering with network mapping software that would allow users to see their IT assets in real-time.

Such a component would offer functionality unrivaled by competing enterprise IT providers, creating a new, visual and interactive way of performing network analysis and assessment.

The requirements

Our customer required a visualization solution that offered:

• Real-time visualization – The component needed to be capable of showing database updates instantaneously, so IT managers have access to the most up-to-date information.
• Interactivity – Users needed to be able to explore and interact with their data. Instead of just viewing connections, there was a requirement for users to explore infrastructure data at their own pace, expanding connections and details on demand but also updating their data within the visualization component.
• Functional flexibility – Our customer needed to construct a custom component with a user experience and feature set that blended seamlessly with their existing platform.
• Visual flexibility – As a white label deployment of KeyLines, complete visual customization was required. Color coding and custom icons were also employed to help communicate different types of network connections and different logical layers to the network – from physical to application connections.
• Browser compatibility – The visualization solution needed be compatible across all common web browsers.
• Outstanding support – Visualization is not a core competency for our customer, and sourcing expert development resource is costly and impractical. Comprehensive customer support and consultancy was therefore required to ensure successful deployment.
• Security – Information and cyber security are key considerations for IT service management. Any visualization solution needed to fit our customer’s high security standards.

The solution

Having selected KeyLines as the preferred solution for their network visualization needs, our customer began an evaluation.

To leverage the skills and experience of Cambridge intelligence staff, two weeks of technical consultancy was agreed. KeyLines’ developers visited the customer’s site to provide practical prototyping and programming support, ensuring a highly useable and useful application that fits seamlessly into the customer’s existing environment.

The application

At the time of writing, the KeyLines component has been constructed and is being prepared for release to visualize some of the world’s largest IT infrastructures. The new functionality is expected to be a major selling point for existing and prospective users of our customer’s software.

Further development with KeyLines is already being planned. The flexible ‘per application’ license arrangement means our customers can use KeyLines as many times as they like within their application – helping network visualization revolutionize IT management for the future.

Of the project, Cambridge Intelligence’s North America Manager, Corey Lanum, says:

“This project has been a real milestone for KeyLines, and our customer. We’ve been able to expand the limits of our software, working with some of the biggest and most complex networks there are, and in real-time too.

“It’s great that KeyLines has been recognized by some of the most innovative companies around as a way to deploy data visualization, and all its benefits, in high profile, customer-facing platforms.”

Find out more

If you would like to know more about how KeyLines could help your organization deploy data visualization, or if you’d like to start a free trial of KeyLines, get in touch today.

Learn more about network mapping software and network analysis tools.