Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL) relies on critical network applications to serve over 4 million customers. The nGenius Service Assurance Solution provides NWL with improved visibility and monitoring of these applications across its geographically dispersed network. This helps NWL maintain high levels of customer service by quickly identifying and resolving any issues with VoIP or Citrix applications. The intuitive interface of nGenius has also improved IT productivity by making it easier to analyze network traffic and problems. Overall, the solution ensures NWL's network infrastructure supports their commitment to sustainability and customer satisfaction.

1. CASE STUDY
NetScout Ensures Network Applications
Always On Tap for Northumbrian Water
Limited (NWL)
The nGenius Solution Helps Northumbrian Water Limited
Maintain Award-Winning Commitment to Sustainability
and High Levels of Service for Customers
Overview
Customer
Northumbrian Water Limited
Location
Durham, UK
Business Challenge
• Ensure availability of business-
critical Voice over IP (VoIP) and
Citrix applications for 4.4 million
customers
• Maintain application and services
visiblity across a geographically-
dispersed network with 50 WAN
links and 2,000 corporate users
• Deploy a single, unified solution
that captures, stores, retrieves and
analyzes network traffic data Customer Profile
NetScout Solution Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL) is a The NWL application network plays a
• Verifies that VoIP and Citrix traffic major utility company headquartered in critical role in the company’s success, and
are operating in their appropriate
Durham City in the United Kingdom, and is substantial in scope. The infrastructure
QoS classes and ensures reliable
has been a NetScout customer since May base consists of three data centers, two in
communication between remote sites
2009. NWL serves a population of 2.6 the north and one in the south, connected
• Provides a unified platform to
support monitoring and analysis million people in the north east of England by IPoDWDM fiber connections. The data
of business-critical network with water and sewerage services, and 1.8 centers and NWL business office locations
infrastructure such as routers and million in the south east of England where are interconnected by more than 50
servers it provides water services trading as Essex separate WAN links, varying in bandwidth
• Delivers fast and intuitive analysis, & Suffolk Water. As an essential utility, it is from 256Kbps to 10/100 Ethernet.
and provides customizable charts regulated by industry regulator, OFWAT.
More than 2,000 employees use the
and graphs
Northumbrian Water Limited is a company network, which is supported by a mix
Business Value
that is committed to best practice and of equipment from multiple vendors,
• Maintains high levels of customer
continual improvement in the areas of including Cisco (LAN, WAN), Nortel (LAN),
service and satisfaction, a major
environmental performance, community and Siemens (VoIP). Primary business
element in NWL’s corporate
responsibility strategy investment and sustainability, and applications that depend on the network
• Easily adapts to the constantly this approach to business is reflected include desktops using the Microsoft Office
changing demands of the NWL throughout the organization, including the suite, Citrix clients, and the company’s
network to provide constant IT department. The company is recognized IP-based voice communications system.
visibility into business-critical, high- as a sector leader in its industry. In The network and service infrastructure
availability applications and services 2009, NWL received a major accolade: also supports Northumbrian Water’s web
• The IT team is able to discover The Queen’s Award for Enterprise for its presence, which is the information and
problems that otherwise may ongoing and impressive commitment to contact portal for its 4.4 million customers.
not have been found, speeding sustainability.
problem resolution and improving IT
productivity
ENTERPRISE

2. CASE STUDY | NetScout Ensures Network Applications Always On Tap for Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL)
“Our relationship with customers is vital to the success
of our business and we are committed to providing
consistently high quality service. The nGenius Service
Assurance Solution allows us to more easily address
application performance problems across the entire
network and maintain a robust IT infrastructure. In
doing so, the nGenius solution is a critical component
of our corporate responsibility strategy, and helps
us to improve our already high levels of customer
service and continue to deliver on our award-winning
commitment to sustainability for our community.”
Business Challenge NetScout Solution
As a primary utility, NWL is a regulated Because of the extended nature of the NWL had been using another vendor’s
company which is required to maintain NWL network, the company has no choice probes for packet capture and diagnosis,
specified levels of service to its customers. but to run enterprise applications across but were unable to easily interpret
If not quickly identified and resolved, WAN connections. problems and take appropriate action.
network anomalies can lead to service NWL could monitor high-availability
and application disruptions. Network- Key applications that are critical to applications from a performance
related problems that could affect Northumbrian Water Limited’s business perspective, but there were never enough
customer support in any way were simply operations were particularly challenging. probes to manage everything. The IT team
not acceptable. NWL clearly needed a The majority of NWL’s client-server had positioned a few probes in as many
solution that provided the IT team with traffic occurs over Citrix. Citrix clients key points as possible, and if a problem
increased network visibility across critical and virtual servers, and the Microsoft occurred, a packet capture was performed
applications, an extended geography with Office applications that Citrix supports, in an attempt to try to resolve the problem.
several remote locations, and multiple require specific amounts of minimum Often IT would hear about a problem after
infrastructure vendors. bandwidth and users of these applications the fact and would investigate, but by
are particularly sensitive to response then it was too late to determine the exact
Managing the smooth operation of a times. Because of the way Citrix works, cause. Clearly this was not a sustainable
geographically dispersed service delivery sessions can remain open for long periods solution.
network is a challenge, especially with of time, and NWL wanted to be able to
so many WAN connections of varying monitor traffic for those long durations and Northumbrian Water Limited’s IT group
bandwidths and capacities. Consistent determine connection times. works in a five-year technology cycle, and
and reliable WAN performance is a critical when it was time to refresh their network
requirement for network operations at Across the same network infrastructure, probe and packet capture technology, they
Northumbrian Water, and the nGenius NWL has been deploying Voice over set their sights on a solution that would
Service Assurance Solution has been IP (VoIP) for telephony services, which enable them to continuously capture large
tasked with a key service assurance role. requires minimum amounts of bandwidth amounts of network data and save it for
and extremely low latency. later review and analysis. After a rigorous
ENTERPRISE 2

3. CASE STUDY | NetScout Ensures Network Applications Always On Tap for Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL)
in-house comparison with their current has proven to be more useful to the team VoIP and Citrix are high-availability
vendor, NWL selected the nGenius Service compared to previous solutions, and has applications, and network Quality of
Assurance Solution. NWL’s decision was enabled them to take decisive action, Service (QoS) has a direct impact on both
driven by the ability of the nGenius solution using the NetScout InfiniStreams to drill of them. The nGenius solution helps NWL
to operate at what NWL considers to be down into the network. The winning to verify that VoIP and Citrix traffic are
at the “high end”. Translated, that means combination of nGenius Performance operating in their appropriate QoS classes,
the nGenius is able to deliver proven Manager plus InfiniStreams and Probes ensuring reliable communications between
performance as the solution of choice in has clearly made the difference for NWL. NWL remote sites. And with the nGenius
complex enterprise environments that solution, NWL has discovered problems
depend on high-availability applications to Business Value that otherwise may not have been found,
support their business operations. such as mis-configurations of routers
The IT team at Northumbrian Water which negatively impact delay-sensitive
NWL deployed the nGenius Service Limited appreciates the intuitive nature of applications such as VoIP. As a result, the
Assurance Solution in its three data the nGenius Service Assurance Solution, speed of problem resolution has increased
centers, placing nGenius InfiniStreams and relies on NetScout products to help and service disruptions have been
in two of the data centers, and nGenius keep applications operating efficiently. The significantly reduced.
Probes in the third data center. This has nGenius Service Assurance Solution has
enabled NWL to monitor, capture, and provided significant benefits to NWL’s day- The IT team at NWL is more productive,
analyze all of the traffic that traverses the to-day operations, enabling the IT team spending less time trouble-shooting
edge of the network. to more easily identify problems and take problems. Overall, the nGenius solution
corrective action. For example, problems is a key factor in maintaining high levels
Besides the ability of the nGenius Service associated with the VoIP and Citrix / of customer service and satisfaction,
Assurance Solution to effectively support MS Office applications…both essential an extremely important element in
its network and application environment, to NWL’s business operations…can be Northumbrian Water Limited’s corporate
the IT team at NWL especially liked the more readily identified and resolved. Thus responsibility strategy which ensures their
user interface of the nGenius Performance the nGenius solution makes a significant reputation as a leading business in their
Manager. Because of its intuitive contribution towards helping the IT team at industry sector.
operation, nGenius Performance Manager NWL to maintain the high levels of service
enables NWL to obtain network and uptime and availability that are necessary
application information faster and more in an organization that provides essential
effectively than ever before. In addition, water and waste services around the
the quality of the information provided by clock to a large business and residential
the nGenius Service Assurance Solution population.
ENTERPRISE 3

4. CASE STUDY | NetScout Ensures Network Applications Always On Tap for Northumbrian Water Limited (NWL)
Table 1: Solution Highlights
Attributes Benefits
Proven The nGenius Service Assurance Solution was selected by NWL because of its proven abilities and performance in
highly complex application and networking environments
Scalability The nGenius solution delivers a unified platform which can be readily expanded over time as the needs of the
organization evolve
High Availability 7x24x365 performance monitoring and service assurance solution
Service Consistency The nGenius solution monitors critical, high-availability applications, helps NWL to verify that VoIP and Citrix traffic
are operating in their appropriate QoS classes, and ensures reliable communications between NWL sites
Operational Efficiency Significantly reduces the time required to detect, identify, and resolve service delivery anomalies, and enhances IT
productivity
Table 2: Network Snapshot
NetScout Systems Equipment Deployed nGenius Service Assurance Solution: nGenius Performance Manager, nGenius InfiniStream Appliances, nGenius
Probes
Network Scope Three data centers connected by IPoDWDM fiber connections. Data centers and NWL business office locations are
interconnected by more than 50 separate WAN links, varying in bandwidth from 256Kbps to 10/100 Ethernet
Users The NWL network is used by 2,000 corporate employees, and ultimately serves 4.4 million NWL customers in the
UK
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Phone: 978-614-4000 San Jose, CA 95134 Taipei, Taiwan London E14 5DY, United Kingdom
Toll Free: 800-357-7666 Phone: 408-571-5000 Phone: +886 2 2717 1999 Phone: +44 207 712 1672
NetScout offers sales, support, and services in over 32 countries (see website for contact details).
For more information, please visit Copyright © 2010 NetScout Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. NetScout, nGenius, Sniffer, and InfiniStream are registered trademarks of NetScout Systems, Inc. and/or its
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