Industry: Mining, Rail, and Marine Transportation
Washington Business Services (WBS) needed a solution to automate the secure transfer of files between its own internal companies and other external companies via FTP. WBS, which provides IT services to The Washington Companies, selected GoAnywhere MFT for its data translation capabilities and multiple security protocols, including OpenPGP. “It wasn’t until we installed GoAnywhere MFT and received ... initial training that other possibilities for this product became apparent,” said Paul Morton, Applications Developer at Washington Business Services.
One possibility emerged when designing an interface to the Network Monitoring System (NMS) for WBS’s new Class 1 Data Center. WBS needed something that could be automated, send alerts when required and communicate with a variety of systems. Many individual applications could perform different portions of the task. However, creating a custom application or staffing a separate development team was not an option for this project.
The NMS monitors environmental conditions in the Data Center. Drastic changes in any one condition could indicate a problem with the environmental systems and jeopardize the Data Center’s operation.
The requirements for an automated interface with the NMS were unique. First, the application would need to make limited connections to the system as multiple connections bogged down the system and reduced performance. Second, the environmental data resided in a proprietary database and required translation to an SQL database. Third, staff needed notification if a situation developed.
Although GoAnywhere MFT was purchased for the secure transfer of files between The Washington Companies, it also provided the flexibility and notification tools this situation required. Within a short period of time, a separate project in GoAnywhere MFT was configured to assist the NMS.
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Multiple data records were required for environmental system reporting, but GoAnywhere MFT only needed one connection to the NMS to gather the requested information. A single connection eliminated the load issues on the server.
The next task focused around simplifying the monitoring system communication with the reporting and logging database. The data translation capability within GoAnywhere MFT could gather the pertinent information from the monitoring system and translate it into the reporting SQL database.
Finally, GoAnywhere MFT's ability to repeat this process in short intervals and send a customized email or SMS for any system alert, made the NMS project come together.
“Not only would we highly recommend GoAnywhere MFT because of its flexibility and ease of use,” said Morton, “[HelpSystems] has provided great sales support to get us up and running. Now that we are becoming more familiar with its capabilities, we are finding more places to use the product, with no additional cost.”
[HelpSystems] has provided great sales support to get us up and running. Now that we are becoming more familiar with its capabilities, we are finding more places to use the product, with no additional cost.
Paul Morton, App Developer, Washington Business Services
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