Global Professional Services Provider Delivers Exceptional End User Experiences for Over 10,000 Users

“In order to deliver exceptional end user experiences to our clients and their users, we can either hire expensive Citrix consultants to isolate root causes of performance issues when they arise or invest in technologies like Goliath. Goliath’s embedded intelligence and automation not only helps us troubleshoot but also proactively prevents end user performance issues from happening.”

 

– John Bennett, Principal Consultant and Head of EPPM Practice at Locana.

Infrastructure

Citrix XenApp, Oracle Primavera P6, Azure

Challenge

Locana provides global information services to organizations of all sizes around the globe. They are dedicated to delivering exceptional customer care and helping their clients improve overall business performance through IT. One of their specialties is in servicing industries that leverage Oracle Primavera P6, an Enterprise Project Portfolio Management tool.

Primavera P6 is a resource intense application that is best delivered to end users through a virtualized environment. Locana delivers it to their clients through Citrix XenApp. Users of Primavera P6 are in the application often 8-10 hours a day planning projects, manipulating resource allocations, and running cost reports. Interruptions due to slow performance or random logoffs are detrimental as it not only disrupts workflows but can also have a cost impact if reports are not being delivered on time.

For Locana, a big piece of keeping client satisfaction high was ensuring Primavera P6 was always available and high performing. The challenge they faced is that, like with all applications, problems would arise. When performance issues occurred, Locana’s team had no visibility into the root cause. They didn’t know if it was due to an issue with the network, servers, storage, database, or the application architecture. John Bennett, Principal Consultant and Head of EPPM Practice at Locana, said “When performance issues occurred it was a guessing game to determining root cause, and we would spend our energy hoping to stumble on a silver bullet to fix things quickly.”

Eventually, in order to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction, Locananeeded to turn to a 3rd party tool that would proactively monitor and troubleshoot the end user experience. They needed to resolve issues quickly when tickets were filed and to prevent issues before their clients were ever impacted. Their customer commitment is to improve business performance and the only way to do that is to anticipate issues and address them before work is disrupted.

This is why Locana turned to Goliath Technologies. Goliath offers end user experience monitoring and troubleshooting software, with embedded intelligence and automation, to anticipate, troubleshoot, and prevent end user performance issues regardless of where workloads, applications, or users are located.

Solution

Isolating the Root Cause of Poor End User Performance Issues

Here are two examples of where Locana leveraged Goliath to address end user experience issues.

Troubleshooting Slow Citrix Logons

One challenge Locana faced was users calling in complaining of slow logons for Citrix or Primavera P6. The Locana team had little visibility into many of the factors that could impact the performance. Many of these users would travel to different locations to visit their project sites, so Locana didn’t know if they were logging on from a building site, remote location, or from within their office. They didn’t know if they had a good network connection or were tethering with their phone. The other pieces unknown were what laptops were being used, what browsers were being used, and other end user behavior factors. John shared, “We would get tickets that logon took 5 minutes, and we really didn’t have good insights to why. We also didn’t know if this was a one-off issue or impacted a high number of users.”

When the Locana team brought in Goliath, one of the first things they did was start collecting data about the end user sessions. Here they quickly were able to see a view into all sessions and identify that roughly 20% of all users were in fact experiencing poor logons.

From there, they started looking into the issues further and saw that many of these users were experiencing Long Client Validation or Server Validation Times (Figure 1). These longer times are highly indicative of something being wrong with Citrix Receiver. What the team at Locana found was that some clients were on older Citrix Receiver technologies, which allowed them to prove that by investing in an upgrade their end users would immediately see a performance improvement in logon times.

Figure 1: Logon Duration Tab
The Logon Duration tab displays the breakdown of the end user login from start to finish, giving the administrator usable metrics to reduce troubleshooting time. For example, long Client Validation and Server Validation times can indicate if poor performance is a result of a bad Citrix Receiver, enabling someone to quickly resolve.

Troubleshooting Poor Session Performance

Another area of ongoing concern was around poor session performance. Users of Primavera P6 were complaining of their application freezing or dropping connectivity altogether. The top complaints were coming from a single location, but Locana could not identify anything causing the issue within the Citrix infrastructure. The IT team onsite said there was no issue with the network, it didn’t appear to be an issue with the end points, or any other environmental factor.

Once Goliath was implemented, Locana was able to show that ICA Latency was high, indicating poor performance. They were able to drill into a specific user session and show that at the same time ICA latency spiked so did the network. They also were able to show with another chart that at the same time Connection Speed and Bandwidth dipped simultaneously (Figure 2). The data showed that while the network was working fine, the allocation to the Citrix sessions running Primavera P6 was not enough for this highly resource intense application. The fix is simple. Add more bandwidth allocation to Citrix. While the fix is easy, days or even weeks of time could have been wasted arguing about root-cause and pointing fingers. Having hard evidence on root-cause fosters collaboration and faster resolution times when multiple teams and vendors are involved.

Figure 2: ICA/HDX Tab
The ICA/HDX details the ICA channel usage to and from the user’s endpoint to the user’s virtual machine or session host server. This is often a key metric in a user’s experience. In this instance seeing a spike in ICA  Latency and Network Latency often indicates a bandwidth allocation problem.

Proactively Monitoring Moving Workloads to the Cloud

In addition to using Goliath to troubleshoot issues, Locana leverages Goliath to proactively monitor the IT delivery infrastructure to alert on key conditions, events, and failure points around the end user experience. This was critical during a big initiative at Locana where they were moving their Citrix workloads from on-premise to the public cloud, Azure. Locana needed to ensure that as the infrastructure moved there was no interruption to the end user experience.

First, they leveraged Goliath to gather analytics on performance with the on-premise deployment. Then, as they migrated workloads, they continued to confirm that as workloads moved performance stayed equal or improved. They also set up proactive alerts to be notified if certain thresholds were hit around round-trip times, memory utilization, CPU usage, disk speed, and other performance metrics.  As a result, Locana had a smooth transition moving their data center from on-premise to the cloud and uninterrupted services for their end users.

Figure 3: Monitoring Rules Setup
Monitoring rules are easily set up with configurable thresholds to align to each individual environment regardless of on-premise or in the cloud.

Results

Locana shared that without Goliath they would have tried throwing more hardware or CPU power at the issues to improve performance, and that this would have been a waste of money, time, and resources. They also could have invested in outside resources to try and resolve the issues, but that too may have delivered a short-term fix for immediate problems while doing nothing to prevent issues from occurring in the future. John shares, “At the end of the day, building the business case for Goliath was simple. We needed data. Data to identify fixes for our end user performance issues and data to ensure we could be proactive in addressing performance issues. Goliath gives us the data we need to be proactive in our business.”

With Goliath’s end user performance monitoring and troubleshooting software, Locana has transformed their support team to be proactive in addressing performance issues resulting in higher customer satisfaction and ability to positively impact their client’s overall business performance.

MSP Monitors Hybrid Cloud Services to Deliver Exceptional Customer Service

 “Goliath is a superior admin tool that gives us peace of mind that we are constantly delivering a reliable, high-performing hybrid cloud managed service to our customers. Without Goliath we would only be reactive, responding to customer issues versus proactively identifying performance bottlenecks and addressing them before a customer is ever impacted.” – Andy Smith, Network Support Administrator of Cloud Geeni

Infrastructure

Proprietary cloud platform utilizing Microsoft Hyper-V, Azure, and Remote Desktop Services.

Challenge

Cloud Geeni is a fully managed cloud service provider guaranteeing their customers of all sizes 99.9% up-time and high-performing virtualized desktops and applications on their proprietary cloud platform. Their customer service commitment is high, promising their customers that they will not be burdened with the day-to-day maintenance of their IT delivery infrastructure, enabling their users to work freely with high-performing applications and desktops anywhere and at any time.

In order to deliver on this commitment, Cloud Geeni must be notified anytime something could negatively impact their customers’ overall performance. They need to know if a new application was added and isn’t maximizing current CPU levels, which could negatively impact end user performance. It is critical, as a service provider, that they are proactive and know the current state of their infrastructure 24/7 and how that infrastructure has changed over time. For example, they need to be able to monitor trends and warn their clients when additional resources (i.e. memory, CPU) need to be added to support their growing applications and workforce. Without the ability to be proactive, their whole business is at risk as customer retention becomes near impossible. Finally, if issues do arise, they need the visibility and metrics to troubleshoot quickly, isolate root cause, and implement a permanent fix solution.

Solution

Monitoring Hybrid IT Environments

Cloud Geeni has a proprietary hybrid platform compromised of Azure, physical devices, and Microsoft Hyper-V. This infrastructure supports Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for many of their customers. The complexity of the architecture makes it impossible to monitor and troubleshoot from a single console – unless they invest in a third-party tool which can look across all elements within the IT delivery infrastructure.

This is why Cloud Geeni turned to Goliath Technologies nearly 5 years ago, looking for a purpose-built tool that could anticipate, troubleshoot, and prevent end user performance issues regardless of where IT workloads or users were located.

Goliath runs on every single one of Cloud Geeni’s servers and desktops, monitoring and alerting when issues arise around:

• CPU usage
• Memory utilization
• Disk errors

By enabling these alerts, Cloud Geeni can address issues before they negatively impact the performance of their customers’ virtualized desktops. For example, one day they got an alert showing a spike in memory usage which would slow performance down. They were able to identify that this customer recently introduced a new CRM system which was consuming significantly more memory. Based on data-backed evidence, they were able to advise their customer that in order to prevent performance issues they needed to invest in more memory given that the new CRM tool was starting to spike Memory Use (see Figure 1). This is just one example on how Cloud Geeni is better managing their business by proactively addressing performance issues before their customers are impacted.

Figure 1: Charts like the one above quickly enables Cloud Geeni to show their customers when they are at risk of maximizing their Memory allocation. In the graph above you can see Memory Use is ok but it is at risk of getting into the red, indicating lack of memory, which can impact performance. Now Cloud Geeni is enabled to have a data-driven proactive conversation communicating that if more load is added they will need to increase memory to maintain their level of performance.

Results

Increased Efficiencies and Data-Driven Conversations

Beyond helping Cloud Geeni become more proactive with their customers, by leveraging Goliath they are also able to be more efficient and foster data-driven conversations with their customers.

If Goliath wasn’t used, Cloud Geeni would require more support staff manually checking multiple systems and screens daily to ensure everything was working as expected. Not only does this manual effort increase risk of error, it also has a significantly higher cost due to additional headcount. Goliath leverages embedded intelligence and automation to guide the team on what metrics to monitor and how to monitor and alert on them for over 250 key conditions, events, and failure points. Andy Smith, Network Support Administrator of Cloud Geeni, said that, “By leveraging Goliath, it’s as if we hired multiple full-time troubleshooting experts who not only solve issues but also proactively identify and alert on them before end users are impacted. This not only saves us dollars, but at the end of the day provides an even higher level of customer care for Cloud Geeni.”

Finally, another advantage for Cloud Geeni is they can have data-driven conversations with their customers about the ongoing needs and growth of their environment. Cloud Geeni shares reports with their customers showing trends about usage and performance. For example, they can now go to their customer and show with factual evidence that over a period of time memory use has increased, indicating that in order to keep performance high, an investment in more hardware is needed. Prior to Goliath, these conversations were more difficult to share as they didn’t have the reports to cross correlate performance with metrics. These conversations typically result in customers investing more with Cloud Geeni, and they have hard evidence on why that investment is needed. This not only drives revenue for Cloud Geeni, but it also makes those customer conversations much simpler.

When Andy Smith was asked to describe Goliath in three words he said, “superior admin tool.” He also commented that “Without Goliath’s monitoring, our support would be more labor intensive. We need to know of any performance issues before our customers are impacted or we aren’t delivering on our customer commitments.”

“We rescued our Citrix Workspace & IGEL Project”

“It’s easy to use 25-30% of what a solution can do but with Goliath we are constantly in that product. It provides too much value that we can never set it aside. The ability to see all our cross-platform products in one tool and to quickly have true visibility into the issue to guide expectations and meaningful conversations with our end users is priceless.”
— Mark Keefer, Senior Infrastructure System Administrator, Penn National Insurance.”

Infrastructure

Citrix XenDesktop; IGEL Endpoint; VMware vSphere; Cisco IP Communicator (softphone)

Challenge

Penn National Insurance‘s IT team was facing a massive increase in the number of remote workers and they needed a way to:

• Support a surge of remote workers using Citrix.
• Respond to an increased amount of troubleshooting calls to resolve issues.
• Prevent performance issues rather than reacting to increased support tickets.
• Proactively document end user experience metrics rather than relying on end users’ feedback.
• Report to management on remote worker productivity – Citrix logon frequency and applications used.

In response, the IT team rolled out its virtual workspace initiative, proving to be one of their most challenging IT projects. The Penn National Insurance IT team had to work across multiple technologies including IGEL, Cisco, and Citrix as well as contend with each unique environment their employees were connecting from to provide a consistent end user experience – home office, remote office, coffee shops, etc.

An inherent issue with the virtual workspace initiative is the need to rely on and manage multiple vendors to enable this remote worker lifestyle. Penn National wanted to be able to proactively monitor, manage and troubleshoot all of the elements across the overall delivery infrastructure including IGEL Endpoints, Cisco IP Communicators (softphones) and various connection methodologies whether it is WIFI, satellite or hardwired phone lines, Citrix XenDesktop and VMware vSphere.

“We wanted to provide one unified experience to all users regardless of their device, locations or type of connection as part of the virtual workspace initiative,” said Dan Morrison, Director IT I&O, Penn National Insurance.

Solution

Two examples of technical issues that were resolved which could have slowed their initiative:

Issue #1:

“We wanted to see all of the delivery infrastructure subsystems and monitor them proactively from a single pane of glass so we could anticipate end user experience issues and troubleshoot them quickly when they arise,” said Morrison. “The image below is the Goliath Automatic Citrix Discovery and Dependency Map, which gives us the NOC view. We look at this every day and it is refreshed in real time so we can determine at a glance if there are issues and where they are so we can troubleshoot quickly.”

An employee is calling in from their home office using an IGEL Endpoint, Cisco IP Communicator (softphone) and utilizing a connection which can be anything from a hard line, satellite to WIFI. Given all these moving parts, Penn National needed a way to anticipate and be alerted to issues, for example, connection speed being slow and or overall session latency being high, before or at the same time as the employee. Then, they needed to be able to troubleshoot the issue down to the root cause.

Issue #2:

“We had a user that was connecting from their home office and complaining about logon times. Using the ICA and HDX drill down from the session display (image below) I could see that the issue was connection speed and therefore the problem was from the house to the data center. After further conversations with the end user we discovered the WIFI was overloaded with other users in the home while the employee was attempting to use the Cisco softphone so it couldn’t handle the voice payload. She had the other users stop using the internet and she was able to restore her voice performance.”

Screenshot: Above shows a drop in “Connection Speed” from the IGEL endpoint at the user’s home office. So we know at a glance that bandwidth from the home office is the issue. Short term we suggested they reduce the number of users connected to the home WIFI. Long term they upgraded their internet package.

The technology also allows IT to look at latency trends and actual latency metrics in real time. According to Morrison, “I can simply sort the session display by latency length and receive alerts to high latency. Then if I see high collective latency I know it’s inside the data center and if it is just a handful of users I know it’s outside the data center. Just this disqualification is huge for us and cuts down on massive time wasted looking for where an issue might be. I use Goliath literally all the time and I am in the software multiple times a day.”

Results

Penn National Insurance was able to leverage the detailed end user and Citrix Delivery infrastructure metrics to ensure the successful rollout of their Virtual Workspace Initiative.

Video: Prove Home WIFI as Root Cause of Citrix Latency