Betfred, an independent bookmaker, is ahead of schedule in its roll out of server monitoring and management technology to improve service level management of its mission-critical systems.
The deployment of the NimBUS server monitoring and management solution from provider Nimsoft across Betfred's 680 UK shops due for completion by the end of this year will enable the company to proactively manage its critical line-of-business applications as part of its ongoing business strategy to provide real-time betting to its customers.
The solution is also designed to support the bookmaker's migration to a new real-time betting transaction and risk management software. Betfred network manager Andy Burgess said guaranteeing IT uptime is a key component of the company's ability to serve its customers.
"If you consider that we deal with approximately 83,000 bets just on a Saturday, this is not an idle statement," said Burgess. "When a bet is placed in a shop or online, the customer expects the resulting transaction to be prompt and accurate. This places huge demands on our servers and infrastructure and we need to know that it is performing within acceptable parameters and NimBUS removes the guesswork at a stroke."
Betfred now has the capability to monitor individual servers, components and availability at a glance through the dashboard tool, allowing it to identify potential and actual problems based on established parameters. "The result is that we are in a far stronger position to deliver the service levels that the business expects and ensure the resources are available to support Betfred's growth strategy," he added.
Betfred's server environment is currently made up of 90 per cent HP servers running Windows and 10 per cent Sun Solaris servers. Each Betfred shop has its own server that is linked back to the central IT department in Cheshire, which has responsibility for managing the availability of all these servers.
