"Philip, I knew from our first meeting (we did get on so well) that Astro would be a company that would work well with Darley..."
"...It has been good to work with such a dedicated team of people rather than a faceless company and I hope Astro Communications and Darley have many years of working together like this."
John Nethersole, Darley
"Far too often these days, people complain but do not pass on praise. We have had an absolutely fantastic day today with Rob, under the most difficult of circumstances. He has gotten to grips with our network very quickly, and we have made some significant modifications..."
"...I am absolutely delighted with the progress that we have made with him. Well done Astro on a great days work!"
Richard Roebuck, Edwards Duthie
NSI Assist Automated Help Desk
NSI Assist is a comprehensive all in one IT Solution for PC’s, Laptop’s, Servers and network devices such as routers, firewalls, switches and wireless access points. It combines the benefit of direct access to each of the client systems and automated management, maintenance and asset tracking to provide fast effective modern day solution for businesses that are looking to streamline their IT services.
NSI Assist will incorporate a number of systems in order to provide a complete IT solution for the client including:
- Support Ticketing System
- Proactive Monitoring
- Log Message Storage and Analysis
- Solution Maintenance Schedule
- Asset Tracking
- Software Auditing
- Solution Risk Analysis
- Security Testing
- User Management
- Compliance
Support Ticketing System
NSI Assist consists of two separate applications: NSI Assist Desktop and NSI Assist Server that are designed to work through the central online system. Users have the ability to submit support tickets via the desktop application, or directly online. The support tickets are managed by the system using the pre-agreed service levels (SLA’s) to ensure that your SLA’s are guaranteed to be met. The system has integration of third party vendors to ensure that all the SLA’s are monitored.
The main theme that remains constant throughout all of the assist applications is complete transparency to the client and their users. This is achieved not just through transparency of service levels but through integration of full network monitoring and real-time updates to support tickets as they occur. Centralised maintenance scheduling for users and servers enables the users to control and monitor when maintenance work is being carried out. This is backed-up with system wide announcements to ensure that all of the users are kept aware of maintenance updates.
Proactive Monitoring
NSI Assist has it’s own monitoring daemon that is designed to be granular and include graphing of device performance, event alerting and threshold monitoring. The system realises on SNMP, ICMP, TCP/UDP connect and custom graphs for visual representation of stored statistics. The concept of transparency to the end user means that all the event monitoring is viewable to all users. In the event of an outage the system takes a snap-shot of the last logs stored prior to the issue and cross compares then with a predefined list of checks to attempt to determine the cause of the outage. At the same time all the designated users are notified by email and an announcement is placed on the system to notify of the event. NSI Assist then provides the engineer with all the necessary information they require to resolve the issue therefore reducing engineering time spent fixing the problem. All of the information received and processed by the monitoring daemon is stored within the database for future analysis.
Log Message Storage and Analysis
NSI Assist utilises its own log summary and analysis daemon that processes the logs real-time as they are received. The system summarises the logs by comparing them with other logs received from the same device and eliminates the repetitions to only show the information that you are looking for. This is completed on a 5 minute, 15 minute, one hour, daily and monthly basis allowing the system to store a summarisation of the logs for a prolonged period of time. As the logs are processed and re-processed they are checked for intrusion events. NSI Assist is designed to process and receive the logs from the entire solution so it can cross compare events generated and track connections across the network from a specific source. The log analysis is then re-processed for the final time once every six months to produce a long term storage system for log messages received.
Solution Maintenance Schedule
The solution maintenance schedule is designed to provide a management platform for all the solution maintenance tasks. Revision 3 of NSI Assist will have the ability to proactively asses tasks in the schedule and complete some of them automatically therefore reducing engineering time and streamlining the system. The maintenance scheduler is designed with the ability to tackle both server and PC maintenance which will ultimately reduce costly outages and provide a higher level of business continuity.
Asset Tracking
NSI Assist utilises the desktop and server version to provide a clear picture of the IT solution both from the perspective of automated troubleshooting and asset management. This is achieved by maintaining a database table of all the various aspects of the systems including both software and hardware. This is then available both for the engineers when dealing with a support query and for the purpose of compliance and is updated automatically on a regular basis.
Solution Risk Analysis
As a result of NSI Assist managing the logs via the log daemon and highlighting issue as they occur it is possible for the system to provide accurate tracking of events. This in turn provides a level of real-time risk analysis that is updated automatically by the system. This is achieved by applying a number of probability formulas to determine the areas of concern within the solution.
Security Testing
Currently NSI Assist does not provide any form of security testing for devices but planned in R3 is the ability to provide Nessus vulnerability tests of the system which will be included in the automated report.
User Management
NSI Assist R3 will have the ability to be completely interactive with Microsoft Active Directory and provide LDAP support for authentication of users. This in turn will also enable the client to monitor where users are logging on from and set the pace for a proactive productivity monitoring system that is currently being researched for R4.
Compliance
With the growing need for compliance in today’s market NSI Assist has been designed with compliance at the forefront. NSI Assist provides compliancy to FSA, PCI DSS and CoCo standards for storage of log data, network information and security. The other big compliance point to be made about NSI Assist is that it will have the ability in R3 to produce regular checks on client systems to ensure that they systems being monitored are also compliant. This with the incorporated Security testing ability ensures that NSI Assist has the ability to produce regular reports and monitoring of non-compliant areas and issues. This in turn provides a level of continuous compliance monitoring that is almost unheard of in a product such as this.
NSI Assist Online
Features:
- Online Support Ticketing System
- Maintenance Scheduling for Assist Desktop and Server
- Automated Announcements for Maintenance
- System Announcements for Outages
- PC and Server Monitoring
- Log analysis for syslog supported devices and operating systems
- System Log message storage for compliance
- Solution and Server Health Status
- Automated Asset Management for Client Designated Managers
- Asset Viewer for all Client Users
- License and CD key management for Windows XP/Vista/2003 Server
- Service Level Monitoring
- Service Levels Management
- Support Reporting to Managers
- Project tracking and scheduling for new and existing consultancy/projects
NSI Assist Online provides full functionality to the end user including all of the above features. The system controls access within the client organisation utilising a manager user scenario. Managers have the ability to control and maintain users with active directory integration, manage service levels and asset lists as well as view tickets/maintenance by site or entire client. Managers also have the ability to generate reports on system usage, tickets logged and uptime statistics, in order to provide a further level of transparency.
The main benefit for users with NSI Assist Online is the ability to log, track and update support tickets and maintenance tasks from any internet connected machine anywhere. Users also have the ability to view asset tracker for their pc or laptop and search by asset tag for any other device in the asset list. NSI Assist Online Index Page has been designed to bring together all of the various aspects in summary for easy direct access to specific area required. Support tickets when closed by an engineer are required to be marked as resolved by the end user within a two business period to ensure that he user is satisfied. When the user is marking the ticket as being resolved basic feedback is required with the option of additional feedback should the user have time. User feedback is available at anytime for engineers and managers to monitor technical service performance.
NSI Assist Online also provides real-time log analysis using our LogTitus engine to check for security threats, software and hardware faults. This service fully supports Cisco network devices such as routers, switches, wireless access points and firewalls and Linux based servers/desktops.
NSI Assist Desktop
Features:
- Automated software updates and revisions
- Direct secure access for logging tickets into the system from anywhere
- Support ticket management with real-time popup when support tickets are updated
- System announcement popup for maintenance and outages
- Remote desktop access for remote support via Remote Desktop from anywhere
- Automated PC/Laptop maintenance tasks
- PC/Laptop asset tracking
- Automated troubleshooting to minimise user intervention
- Event log management
- System status capture
- Direct chat for user to the engineer dealing with the support issue
- Automated hardware management for file system, disk and memory management
- PC/laptop backup management
- PC/Laptop health status management
- PC/Laptop monitoring
NSI Assist Desktop is a desktop application that provides the user with the ability to log, maintain an and update tickets directly from their pc or laptop against the NSI Assist Database using a secure database connection. This provides the ability to have pop up messages from the start bar when engineer posts an update to a user’s ticket. This also provides the functionality of maintaining an up-to-date asset list including all hardware and software installed of all machines with the NSI Assist Desktop Application automatically. NSI Assist Desktop has the ability to provide scheduled automotive maintenance tasks to maintain each pc to a greater standard.
NSI Assist Desktop also provides automated troubleshooting to provide all the information required to minimise end-user disruption and speed up the support process. This includes testing of Outlook connectivity, traceroute, ICMP ping responses, access to shared network drives, Internet connectivity and event log capture. NSI Assist Desktop supports Microsoft Windows XP and Vista with the .NET environment installed.
NSI Assist Server
Features:
- Automated software updates and revisions
- Server and service monitoring and alerting
- Automated basic maintenance tasks and checks
- Remote access for remote support
- Service pack rollouts and checks
- Automated server backup monitoring and management
- Automated file system monitoring
- Automated event log management
- Automated maintenance scheduling
NSI Assist Server provides direct integration of your server equipment to the Assist system enabling us to extend monitoring to include operating system specifics such as monitoring of NT backup to ensure backups are completed successfully. The server application also enables us to control routine maintenance tasks automatically and use the NSI Assist Scheduler to control when maintenance tasks are run. The server application also includes a series of active directory scripts that are designed to deal with a variety of tasks from controlling and updating network print drivers to the adding of users and groups. Finally NSI Assist Server also brings the server based platform into the asset tracking system with the capturing of installed hardware and software.
Business Benefits (Release 2 – 15th April 2009)
- Central Support system for all users and engineers to visualise IT services therefore providing complete transparency to all system users of the entire solution or the specific issue.
- Managing all IT services in one system (security, monitoring, compliance, support, maintenance and asset management).
- Maximises productivity for engineers by providing automated troubleshooting, network maintenance, asset management and management of support calls.
- Network management and maintenance tasks providing a streamlined IT solution maximising stability.
- Speeds up response times and resolution of support issues; resulting in a reduced loss of productivity to the end user with a greater level of business continuity.
- Increases productivity of the end user by streamlining logging of the support issues, maintaining automated end user to engineer communication and minimises the end user’s involvement in the troubleshooting process.
- Prevent loss in revenue with the integration of proactive 24x7 monitoring, alerting and troubleshooting.
- Increased service levels with continuous monitoring of SLA’s internally and externally.
- Reduced site visits and onsite engineering man hours.
- Easy of management with visualisation of engineer, department and IT service productivity.
- Reduce support calls with automated maintenance scheduling.
- Regulation compliance to PCI, FSA and CoCo for piece of mind.
- Scalability with distributed log analysis and monitoring database nodes with central web based application access.
Business Benefits (Release 3 – July 2009)
- Reduce technical support resolution times with partially automated 1st/2nd line support, maintaining a 50% reduction in downtime and loss in productivity.
- Reduce the requirement for a large scale engineering team and provide an IT department that is highly skilled.
- Minimise costly security breaches with integrated intrusion detection at each workstation.
- Maximise productivity of IT department with fully automated maintenance tasks for servers and network devices.
- Minimise loss of revenue from disaster recovery for automated backup management.
- Maximise network security with automated threat detection and basic network security testing.
- Increase productivity with software management of license keys and distribution.
- Maximise productivity by monitoring of remote office/home office workers.
- Easy of user management with Active Directory integration.
- Monitoring of policies for all aspects of Assist Desktop and Server to ensure a continuing high standard of compliance.