Don’t Let an IT Outage Become Your Next PR Challenge

If you lost mobile or internet service in July, you’re not alone

Millions of subscribers found themselves without mobile and internet service starting July 8th, with some not having service restored before the weekend’s end. The cause? A massive network system failure related to a maintenance update in a provider’s core network. And while the loss of customers’ subscribed services is bad enough, the outage impacted places you may not have expected – with devastating consequences.

This outage was not the first of its kind, either. Canadians experienced a similar service outage in April 2021. What’s more, the overwhelming majority of the time spent resolving a problem is focused on determining what caused the outage.

While these outages were very public, significant incidents in large organizations are more common than you might think, with almost one-third of data centre owners or operators reporting a downtime incident or severe service degradation over the previous year*.

So, what can be done to prevent this kind of outage – and quickly and efficiently get services back up and running when outages do occur?

The first action organizations need to take is to stop the issue from happening in the first place. In cases where the outage cost more than one million dollars, 74% of data centre owners or operators responding to a 2019 study* said their most recent significant downtime incident could have been prevented with better management/processes or configuration. Second, when an incident does occur, those same management/processes will ensure resolution time is far quicker.

With many changes happening early in the morning or late at night, human error is often even harder to resolve as most staff are not working. However, data centre owners and operators who use the BGIS Cormant DCIM solution have access to complete data to make better, more informed decisions when planning, and then confirming those changes in real-time using mobile device scanning. With great data, human error and the incidents they cause can be significantly reduced.

When an error has occurred, the responsive BGIS Cormant DCIM solution can be the difference between a brief lapse in service for a small fraction of subscribers and users, or a nation-wide or even international catastrophe that grinds business operations and vital public services to a halt for hours – or even days. Discovering the source of the problem is a slow process when done manually; often, a large part is physically finding the device. With BGIS DCIM, the faulty device will be found in seconds – not hours. Part of the BGIS Cormant DCIM solution is a data-rich mobile solution that tracks and manages the data centre’s elements, identifies assets needing attention, and reports the requirements necessary to repair it.

Paul Goodison, VP of Technology Infrastructure Solutions for BGIS, emphasizes the need for IT Infrastructure Management in both the public and private Canadian sectors. “With customers across many federal and local governmental, education, and private sector organisations, we know BGIS Cormant solutions ensure those organisations provide a more reliable and resilient services to their customers by avoiding problems in the first place.”

BGIS is the developer of Cormant-CS, a complete DCIM solution with almost 20 years of experience in the Canadian market. The Cormant-CS provides real-time infrastructure data that is used to increase efficiency and reduce downtime. With the automated system alerting, real-time change management and documentation, along with continuous reporting means that the physical environment is constantly tracked.

Ease of use, unmatched reliability and endless integration options are why BGIS Cormant is the world’s best DCIM solution and the leading ITIM and DCIM solution since 2003. With a single global view of the physical data centre environment, including every connection, device, rack, and room all on an easy-to-manage dashboard, Cormant-CS allows for easier oversight for quickly identifying and resolving issues – something no network monitoring solution offers.

Click here to contact us or speak to your usual Avantex for a consultation on how Avantex and BGIS will help your organization improve resilience and redundancy in your data centres and enterprise networks.

* Uptime Institute, September 23, 2019: “How to avoid outages: Try harder!”

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BGIS Cormant Secures Multiple Trellis™ to Cormant DCIM Migration Projects

Over the past 18 years, we have migrated customers to Cormant DCIM from pretty much every DCIM solution out there, in some cases from solutions that don’t even exist anymore. I’m proud to say every customer we have migrated to Cormant-CS from a previous solution is still a customer today. These customers include a global bank that first used Cormant-CS in 2006.

As more customers contact us about migration possibilities, we hear their concerns about every DCIM vendor’s longevity. Some of these customers have already been forced to move from Aperture™ to Trellis. Why is Cormant-CS the right solution? Why will we still deliver new versions in 10 years, 15 years, or 20 years? There are, of course, many answers to that question, but I think two are key:

  1. As part of the global BGIS group, we have enormous resources. Still, more than that, BGIS uses Cormant-CS to deliver work-class Critical Environments management to its customers. BGIS has a customer and business imperative to keep developing Cormant-CS.
  2. BGIS does not develop, manufacture or sell hardware. It does develop great software and knows how to do it. I’ve said that I’d not want to build hardware, and I’m not surprised when I see hardware vendors find developing and selling commercial software products unprofitable. The best DCIM solutions are 100% vendor & hardware agnostic. It’s a rare customer with a single vendor’s hardware.

Cormant DCIM is easy to use, massively scalable, fast, efficient and configurable. Several Trellis customers have been surprised that in Cormant-CS, a report on tens of thousands of devices takes seconds to run, a data hall with hundreds of racks displays in a few seconds, and most users can use Cormant-CS with little to no training. Cormant-CS manages equipment in on-premise data centers, co-location sites, IoT locations, and even cloud servers.

Talk to Cormant, or our local Australasian Distributor Avantex, and we will prove we are the solution of choice if you are migrating from Trellis or just starting out on your DCIM journey. As a special offer, we will provide Cormant-CS to Trellis customers at no more than the annual cost for the Trellis licenses used today.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Avantex/Cormant family.

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Announcing Cormant-CS Version 11.3

Cormant-CS 11.3 contains hundreds of changes to the Assets module to provide a suite of productivity improvements for all users of Cormant-CS.

These improvements are available to both desktop and mobile users.

  • Search and Search Results are now Tabs
  • Filtered Graphical Views
  • Bookmarks Replaced with Health Cards
  • Flexible / User Selectable Tabs
  • Calculated Attributes

Reach out to Avantex or Cormant for more information and help on getting you up to the latest version and increasing your productivity with all the new features that can be offered.

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Advisory: No Cormant Systems Use log4j

The Cormant division of BGIS is aware of the Apache log4j vulnerability CVE-2021-44228.

Cormant has reviewed its delivered software solutions and confirmed that Cormant solutions do not use log4j. Cormant has also analyzed all tools used to develop, test and deliver Cormant solutions and has confirmed those tools are not subject to the reported vulnerability.

Cormant software solutions are Cormant-CS DCIM and Cormant-CS.  The advisory includes all versions of the software currently supported and prior versions that may still be in customer use.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, you may contact us at Cormant-Support@BGIS.com

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Finance Industry

Bank

Thank you for not only providing a full audit of all Assets and Connections (copper, fibre, power) for 200+ racks, but also being able to upgrade all of the firmware and security configurations of all ourover 400 PDU’s during Covid !!

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Major Bank

You were honest in telling us that our data that had been captured by others was not accurate enough for the details that we were after. It was a refreshing approach and helped us define the exact information that was required moving forward.

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Australian Bank

Bank

One of the main reasons we chose Avantex was that we knew you would be around after the installation was completed, and we would not be fobbed off to a Overseas Help Desk when we most needed it !

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BGIS Expands their Critical Environments Services, Acquires Global DCIM firm, Cormant.

Blog, Press Releases / February 1, 2021

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA, USA, February 1, 2021 — BGIS and Cormant announced today that they have completed a transaction under which BGIS has acquired Cormant, a leading global Data Center (DCIM) and IT Infrastructure Management software provider. Cormant’s Chief Executive Officer, Paul Goodison, and his team will remain in place and work within BGIS to support and aid BGIS’s increasing strategic objectives to provide our customers with enabling technology to help them run and manage their Data Center and Critical Environments infrastructure around the world.

Since 2001, Cormant has developed and delivered industry-leading “DCIM and Beyond” software and success to customers worldwide. Clients who choose Cormant enjoy a successful, cost-effective, easy-to-use, and scalable Infrastructure Management solution. Cormant has an unwavering focus on customer success with customers from 2003 who still actively use Cormant solutions today. Cormant’s global footprint includes a wide-range of critical environments, including data centers, hospitals, manufacturing, and military environments.

“BGIS is a great fit for Cormant. I’ve been impressed with their commitment to delivering solutions to customers operating in the global data center and IT infrastructure management environments”, said Paul Goodison, Cormant Founder, and CEO. “BGIS has shown a strong, long-term commitment to their customers, something that is at the very heart of Cormant’s success. I am looking forward to joining forces with BGIS and see them as an ideal home for Cormant’s customers, people, and technology.”

BGIS is on a mission to create a global, technically led, pure-play Integrated Facility Management (IFM) business, and present our customers with the most comprehensive suite of services in the industry. “Enabling our services and our customer’s businesses with industry-leading software and technologies is a foundational element for BGIS,” said Mark Marquis, President, BGIS US and Europe. “We are excited to have Paul and his team join BGIS and partner with us to expand our suite of offerings and capabilities to support and enable our Critical Environments and Infrastructure customers.”

About Cormant

Cormant has been an expert at IT infrastructure management software for the data center (DCIM) and beyond since 2001. Cormant’s unprecedented ease-of-use has delivered DCIM success to hundreds of customers. Cormant is the leading DCIM solution provider for global enterprise data centers, co-location sites, IoT, and campus infrastructure. Cormant’s solutions are sold globally with customers and partners on six continents encompassing all industries.

About BGIS

BGIS is a global leader in the provision of facility management, project delivery, energy & sustainability, asset management, workplace advisory, and real estate services. With a combined team of more than 8,000 employees globally, BGIS relentlessly focuses on delivering innovative technology-enabled service solutions that create value for its clients. Globally, BGIS manages more than 35,000 facilities totaling more than 400 million square feet across several markets including Cloud Enterprise, Financial Services, Telecommunications, Government, Higher Education, Utilities, Oil & Gas, and Healthcare. In addition to managing a diverse portfolio of corporate offices, retail, colleges, hospitals and industrial assets, BGIS is a world leader in the management of data centres and other critical environments. For more information about BGIS please visit http://www.bgis.com

Media Inquiries

For BGIS:
Stefanie Suglio
Marketing and Communications, BGIS
Stefanie.Suglio@bgis.com
+1 647-999-0219

For Cormant:
Joshua Sharon
pr@cormant.biz
+1 805 242 5310

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DCIM Helping Managing Critical IT Infrastructure in the Current Pandemic

By: Paul Goodison

I have been speaking to our global customers about the operational changes they have introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve also had the opportunity to hear a few analysts speak on best practices for data center operations during this time.

The universal approach appears to be keeping as many staff as possible away from the site, working remotely and leveraging onsite smart hands when available. Where team members do have to attend site, managers are ensuring social distancing and maintaining the smallest number of people working in the raised floor space possible. From a hygiene perspective, either in-house or external cleaning services are being used to clean and protect work areas regularly, and at least every shift. There does not appear to be any consensus on what, if any, cleaning to conduct inside the data center.

Our customers have told us how much help their DCIM solution has been during this disruption. It is enabling them to manage their data centers, co-location, and IOT sites while minimizing the need for physical access. One customer told us about automating what used to be a manual task of cycling power to a (dual-powered) server. This is usually a manual unplug process, as there are no trusted records of what PDU sockets a device is plugged in to. But with trusted, mobile captured connectivity records, devices outlets are cycled remotely from within DCIM, saving a person traveling to a site. Working to an incredibly tight deadline a healthcare trust who uses DCIM recently used Cormant-CS to manage the deployment of all the IT infrastructure to a new, pop-up, hospital that was constructed inside a convention center. All the equipment deployment and data outlet connectivity were planned, tracked and deployed to ensure everything was going to work the first time.

We have also seen customers use more of their DCIM then they have before. While using Cormant-CS to plan change is, pretty much, standard practice, not every customer uses the workflow engine. Workflow tasks help automate the planning process and allow for remote collaboration around the server, network, storage, infrastructure and facilities teams. By getting this right, down to the connections and even cables to use, some customers have been able to reduce the number of people that have to touch devices being deployed, reducing the potential infection risk to staff and the enterprise risk that is present if key personnel have to isolate and can’t work. It’s not just the deployment part that is easier with DCIM, directing smart hands, managing equipment receiving, knowing where equipment is and accessing it directly, is all much easier, and involves less physical interaction, when data is available on everyone’s smartphone and devices can be checked with just a barcode scan.

I’m proud of how Cormant-CS is keeping people safe, enterprises operational, and lowering the risk for both parties. One comment I received was, “I didn’t realize how much we relied on the data in Cormant DCIM until I had to work remotely, it’s been invaluable”.

If we can help you work better, please let me know. Cormant is fully operational, and with our remote deployment practices, we can get your data in a single repository quickly.

Stay Safe

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Cormant DCIM Mobility Makes Asset Audits Work

In this blog post, Brad Beamish, Director of Consulting Services for Cormant, reviews why auditing is an essential part of a successful DCIM deployment.

The Equipment Validation Challenge

Cormant routinely manages DCIM deployments for customers where Cormant DCIM replaces an existing tool set for managing IT infrastructure.  In many cases, the current system (often spreadsheets and sometimes home-grown DB’s and other DCIM solutions) contains a partial record set of questionable accuracy.  Cormant works with customers to extract all usable data from the existing records. However, there will always be questions about the overall completeness and accuracy of the data.  When merging multiple data sources, floorplans and rack views, there are likely to be conflicts between the data sources and questions that only a physical visit to the rack can answer. This physical validation process takes effort but Cormant has refined unique online and offline mobility features over the past 17 years ensuring the validation can be completed quickly and accurately.

Asset Validation

Asset Validation should be an essential part of migrating data from customer data sources into a DCIM solution.  Existing records are usually partially accurate and provide a great starting place for DCIM deployments. However, the ultimate trust in the accuracy of the DCIM records can only be fully realized by physically validating every asset. The validation assures not only accurate asset data, but capacity data and, where required, power and data connectivity data.

Cormant Mobility Makes Validation Work

To audit the physical infrastructure, where possible Cormant leverages barcoded assets (most equipment has a barcode) with Cormant’s unique online and offline mobility. Cormant-CS supports the use of smartphones, tablets, and all-in-one Windows® and Android® barcode enabled mobile computers

Mobility gives the validation team complete freedom to physically stand in front of each rack and lookup or scan the barcode of each asset.  Once an asset is found, the user is presented with the existing data set for the asset.  Any physically observable data can be updated, things like RU location and Mounting Type.  Barcoded data can be easily scanned in if missing, like Serial Numbers or Asset tags. Newly found assets can be added using the same process.

Once the user updates and accepts the on-screen data, the asset’s Validation Date attribute is stamped with today’s date.   The screen is cleared, and the next asset is scanned, this is repeated until all assets have been scanned and validated. Key to this process is a one-touch per asset approach and once the data is verified or updated, it is available in the Cormant DCIM system with a record of who made the changes and when.

Once all racks are visited, the assets that still have no Validation Date stamped can be considered to be Missing Assets and moved to a holding space.

Cormant usually finds many new assets as part of this work, immediately improving the project’s ROI. The found rate varies, but is often in the 20 – 35% range, usually quite a surprise for the data center operator.

Validation Counters

To allow for easy tracking of the validation efforts, Asset Validation counters are configured at the Rack, Row and Site levels of the infrastructure and record;

  • Total Assets
  • Total Assets Unvalidated
  • Total Assets Validated

Rack totals are aggregated to the Row and then the Data Center to give an overall picture of the total assets and the total number of Validated/Unvalidated assets within the site.

Reporting

Validation count attributes are stored historically so that Project Managers and customers can track the progress of the validation process.  Historical reports detailing the Total Assets vs. the Total Assets Validated can offer insight to validation progress and the accuracy of the imported records set, clearly illustrating the number of assets that were missing and need to be added as part of the validation process.

In the example below, we started with 1,200 known assets and zero validated, but completed with a little over 1,600 assets, an approximate accuracy of initial data of 66%.

Conclusion

It is important to realize that a point in time audit is useless if the data are not kept up-to-date. Using a combination of Cormant workflow and the same mobility used in the audit, an ongoing change management process that captures future changes as they occur is simple to implement.

The crucial element provided by Cormant-CS is real-time access to all of the data, all of the time, for both read, update, and create. If a change is made, it is recorded at the same time. This provides a closed-loop change process and means users trust the Cormant-CS DCIM, which means it gets used. We look forward to discussing how we can help you migrate to Cormant-CS. Click here to be contacted.

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