Open Source Weblog

…DSP Global, a systems management and integration service company based in London, announced the successful implementation of an enterprise monitoring solution based on GroundWork Monitor Professional within Cancer Research UK.

Thanks to its open source architecture, the firm said, the enterprise level monitor-and-alerting system can provide comprehensive views across Cancer Research UK’s entire technology estate via centralised dashboards and ‘weather maps’.

“GroundWork is a viable alternative to larger, established solutions,” said Nathan Lynch, infrastructure manager, information systems for Cancer Research UK. “It provides the flexibility of open source but with a professionally written and supported, easy to use interface.”

“Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading charity dedicated to cancer research and consequently collects enormous amounts of data which needs to be highly available and accessible. Uptime of their databases and systems is therefore extremely important for successful research,” said the release.

Cancer Research UK said it wanted to be able to monitor the health of its entire IT infrastructure – network, servers, databases and applications – through a single interface. This would not only enable IT staff to rapidly pinpoint IT infrastructure problems, but also to adopt of proactive support mechanisms to identify problems before they impact the systems environment.

“We needed a comprehensive tool like GroundWork with an interface where we could immediately see the source of problems – and take action,” said Jacky Duncan, operation team leader, information systems, Cancer Research UK.

Cancer Research UK said it was impressed by the fact that GroundWork Professional (stage one) could be deployed in just five days. The entire implementation (including network monitoring and a DR solution) took just four weeks, including ‘cool-down’ periods between installations so as to allow each system to bed in successfully.

“Open Source products have always been invaluable tools, and with the professional support that GroundWork provides, it finally allows us to bring open source into the enterprise environment,” said Jason Lester, implementation engineer, DSP Global.

GroundWork Open Source is based in San Francisco, California. Customers include Quicken Loans, Siemens, The World Bank, University of North Carolina, MobiTV, InfoUSA, The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, Genworth and Yodlee. Investors in the privately held firm are JAFCO Ventures, SAP Ventures, Canaan Partners and Mayfield.

GroundWork was founded by David Lilly, who is still CEO. Prior to founding GroundWork, Lilly co-founded SiteROCK, a provider of remote monitoring and IT management services, and CapTech Partners, a company formed to provide seed capital and consulting to promising technology ventures.