Cash Converters Gains Holistic View of 400 Servers and 135 Applications with New Relic
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Pacific
Country
- Australia
Product
- New Relic
- Windows Azure Compute
- SQL Database Platform
Tech Stack
- .NET framework
- Azure
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Digital Expertise
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Predictive Maintenance
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Cash Converters International Ltd is a franchised retailer and micro-lender specializing in the sale of second-hand goods. The company was founded in Western Australia in 1984 and has since grown into a network of more than 700 retail locations in 21 countries. Cash Converters' Point of Sale System is built in the .NET framework and run on the Windows Azure Compute & SQL Database Platform. The company's IT team is responsible for monitoring the application performance of their system, which includes 400 servers and 135 applications.
The Challenge
Cash Converters' IT team faced a challenge in application monitoring. They were using Azure monitoring and application log files to diagnose emerging issues, but these tools did not provide end-to-end application insight. They lacked visibility into network I/O, disk I/O, CPU, memory, application throughput, and how their application consumed system resources and behaved. When a problem arose, they couldn't be sure if it was a database issue or an application issue. They were essentially flying blind. They developed application instrumentation for lower-level insight into granular performance issues, but still lacked a system-wide view. They needed a more holistic approach to monitoring the performance of their application.
The Solution
Cash Converters worked closely with the Data Platform Customer Advisory Team at Microsoft, who recommended New Relic. They deployed the software and were able to monitor 400 servers and 135 applications. New Relic was quick and easy to deploy, and it provided a holistic view across their entire system. The team uses New Relic on a day-to-day basis as an overall health indicator, gaining near real-time insight into problem areas that demand immediate attention. They depend most heavily on their New Relic dashboard, which displays applications in order of general health. They also use the Apdex score to make sure that they're hitting their response-time goals, along with the App Map to see both the performance of the database and the performance of their data warehousing apparatus.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Improving Production Line Efficiency with Ethernet Micro RTU Controller
Moxa was asked to provide a connectivity solution for one of the world's leading cosmetics companies. This multinational corporation, with retail presence in 130 countries, 23 global braches, and over 66,000 employees, sought to improve the efficiency of their production process by migrating from manual monitoring to an automatic productivity monitoring system. The production line was being monitored by ABB Real-TPI, a factory information system that offers data collection and analysis to improve plant efficiency. Due to software limitations, the customer needed an OPC server and a corresponding I/O solution to collect data from additional sensor devices for the Real-TPI system. The goal is to enable the factory information system to more thoroughly collect data from every corner of the production line. This will improve its ability to measure Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and translate into increased production efficiencies. System Requirements • Instant status updates while still consuming minimal bandwidth to relieve strain on limited factory networks • Interoperable with ABB Real-TPI • Small form factor appropriate for deployment where space is scarce • Remote software management and configuration to simplify operations
Case Study
How Sirqul’s IoT Platform is Crafting Carrefour’s New In-Store Experiences
Carrefour Taiwan’s goal is to be completely digital by end of 2018. Out-dated manual methods for analysis and assumptions limited Carrefour’s ability to change the customer experience and were void of real-time decision-making capabilities. Rather than relying solely on sales data, assumptions, and disparate systems, Carrefour Taiwan’s CEO led an initiative to find a connected IoT solution that could give the team the ability to make real-time changes and more informed decisions. Prior to implementing, Carrefour struggled to address their conversion rates and did not have the proper insights into the customer decision-making process nor how to make an immediate impact without losing customer confidence.
Case Study
Digital Retail Security Solutions
Sennco wanted to help its retail customers increase sales and profits by developing an innovative alarm system as opposed to conventional connected alarms that are permanently tethered to display products. These traditional security systems were cumbersome and intrusive to the customer shopping experience. Additionally, they provided no useful data or analytics.
Case Study
Ensures Cold Milk in Your Supermarket
As of 2014, AK-Centralen has over 1,500 Danish supermarkets equipped, and utilizes 16 operators, and is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. AK-Centralen needed the ability to monitor the cooling alarms from around the country, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Each and every time the door to a milk cooler or a freezer does not close properly, an alarm goes off on a computer screen in a control building in southwestern Odense. This type of alarm will go off approximately 140,000 times per year, equating to roughly 400 alarms in a 24-hour period. Should an alarm go off, then there is only a limited amount of time to act before dairy products or frozen pizza must be disposed of, and this type of waste can quickly start to cost a supermarket a great deal of money.
Case Study
Supermarket Energy Savings
The client had previously deployed a one-meter-per-store monitoring program. Given the manner in which energy consumption changes with external temperature, hour of the day, day of week and month of year, a single meter solution lacked the ability to detect the difference between a true problem and a changing store environment. Most importantly, a single meter solution could never identify root cause of energy consumption changes. This approach never reduced the number of truck-rolls or man-hours required to find and resolve issues.