Mitsubishi Motors North America

Netreo Delivers End-to-End Network, Flow, Applications and VoIPManagement for Mitsubishi Motors North America

Business Need

Innovative design, performance and durability have given Mitsubishi Motors North America (MMNA) a strong edge in a highly competitive marketplace since they started doing business in the United States in 1981. The company is fast becoming a leader in pure electric vehicles (EVs) with the introduction of its affordable, eco-friendly, 100% electric Mitsubishi i®. MMNA’s distinctive attributes go beyond the sleek and sporty automobiles they create and permeate every area of the company including their approach to managing the internal IT infrastructure.

Keeping all the applications, networks and systems humming like finely tuned engines is priority one for Jefferson Jih, manager of local area networks for MMNA. For nearly a decade, Jih and his colleagues have relied on the Netreo as a mission-critical management resource.

As Mitsubishi Motors North America’s business and its networks have grown and expanded throughout the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, the existing IT staff has had to work smarter to meet higher business-driven demands.

IT Need

The depth and complexity of Mitsubishi Motors North America’s networks recently dictated a move from frame relay to an MPLS network. MPLS technology delivers handsome cost benefits and better applicability to multi-vendor, multi-protocol environments. From a traffic management perspective, MPLS has significant advantages due to its broader scope and greater scalability. But without the proper tools, there can sometimes be performance and visibility issues.

“Our previous network management systems were much more limited when it came to performance management, because they weren’t centralized. Netreo combines network and device usage and traffic management. We are able to access logs easily, so we can go back and analyze patterns to see what’s happening with any device at any time. Whenever there’s a problem — if server space is reaching capacity, for example — Netreo alerts the responsible party and advises them to take specific action. If we need to troubleshoot an issue, we can always track it down easily with Netreo,” Jih said.

Netreo enables MMNA to take full advantage of MPLS multiprotocol switching and realize all of the potential cost benefits, while mitigating performance and visibility issues that sometimes result from MPLS deployments.

Additionally, Mitsubishi Motors North America needed a tool for monitoring their Voice over IP system. Like many prominent companies, MMNA has migrated to Voice over IP for much of its extended enterprise, which gives the company more flexibility on their voice network, more call features and lower costs for worldwide calling.

“We now have about 600 people using our North American VoIP system, with all calls continuously monitored for quality. Netreo informs us proactively if there are any issues with switches and routers that could affect voice quality and also watches our telecommunications lines for the proper levels of service,” Jih said.

Netreo Solution

The Netreo-powered IT management center at MMNA lets one administrator on a single screen maintain visibility across the entire continent at a glance. With proactive alert settings, network managers can receive updates in real time, from any location, when issues arise that need immediate attention.

“With the Netreo, we are able to continue managing all aspects of our growing enterprise, including application and performance monitoring as well as our voice network, without having to add staff members or more physical servers,” said Jih. “The agentless and clientless approach of Netreo makes a larger network more easily manageable.”

Mitsubishi Motors North America tried several other management tools in the past, but network administrators found that the affordability, depth of information provided and centralized management approach of Netreo offered major advantages.

“Those other products lacked the centralization, simplicity and cost efficiency of Netreo, so we stopped using them in favor of Netreo,” Jih reported. “Some of them required additional software agents for each vendor solution. None of them came close to Netreo’s depth of visibility. We now use the full suite of Netreo solutions to monitor our infrastructure, including hardware, applications, networks and our large Voice over IP system. Netreo has proven to be the best solution for us.”

Benefits to Mitsubishi Motors North America

• Netreo’s centralized approach to monitoring provides a single tool and a single view across the entire infrastructure.
• Proactive management allows network administrators to spot issues before they become problems, and troubleshoot them effectively.
• The total cost of ownership for Netreo is significantly less than other enterprise class network management solutions.
• With a single view, managers can see all devices on the network at once, easily tracking performance parameters, network flow and web applications.
• Netreo optimizes the virtual server environment by monitoring VMWare and ensuring the best usage of each physical server.
• Web application monitoring helps improve performance, identify potential network bottlenecks and deliver the best performance possible for each end user.
• The agentless and clientless approach of Netreo means it doesn’t consume significant resources, no matter how large a network scales.