NETSCOUT > Case Studies > Financial Services Giant Fidelity Investments Uses NETSCOUT Solutions to Optimize the Performance of Its Global Network and IT Services

Financial Services Giant Fidelity Investments Uses NETSCOUT Solutions to Optimize the Performance of Its Global Network and IT Services

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform
Adaptive Service Intelligence™ (ASI) technology
InfiniStream Intelligent Data Sources

Tech Stack

Network Monitoring
Deep Packet Inspection
Real-time Performance Analysis

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software

Applicable Industries

Finance & Insurance

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance
Service Parts Management

Services

Data Science Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Fidelity Investments is one of the leading financial services companies in the world, with over five trillion assets under management. Founded in 1946 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, the multinational financial services giant serves over 20 million individual and institutional clients offering brokerage, wealth management, securities execution and clearance, and investment advice services. The company also boasts one of the largest mutual fund offerings in the world. With operations spanning the globe from Sydney to Paris to Mumbai to Seoul, and with over 20,000 clients and separate institutions to service, Fidelity Investments’ IT infrastructure must be bullet-proof while simultaneously – and transparently – providing backend support.

The Challenge

Fidelity Investments, a multinational financial services giant, faced significant challenges in managing its IT infrastructure. With operations spanning the globe and over 20,000 clients and institutions to service, the company's IT infrastructure had to be robust and provide seamless backend support. The company's online discount brokerage business operation alone has over 140 locations scattered throughout the US, and its website tallies over 21 million unique visitors per month. Moreover, this business-critical information must be accessible 24/7 to not only investors but to other critical internal and external stakeholders as well. Furthermore, information within accounts must be current with up-to-the-minute pricing and financial data. Reliable and integrated communications are also mandatory within the organization and are actually required by the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulation. Beyond the practical requirements of always-on, trouble-free, customer-facing applications, the company’s brand and reputation could be at risk with a publicly-known outage of service. Indeed, in the highly competitive world of financial services, customer service – and services – is paramount. Any semblance of degraded service to its customers will diminish the brand Fidelity has worked so diligently to cultivate.

The Solution

To resolve these issues, Fidelity investigated different solutions including CA, Splunk, Riverbed, Niksun and NetQoS, but ultimately chose the NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Service Assurance platform for its robust, and holistic, operational visibility into its network service dependencies. The NETSCOUT solutions allow for a complete source of information revealing behavior of network, applications, servers, endpoints and session border controllers (SBCs). The scalable packet flow access allows for the aggregating, filtering and distributing of network traffic while also engaging simultaneous but diverse monitoring activities. Continuous deep packet inspection and real-time performance analysis is possible through the Adaptive Service Intelligence™ (ASI) technology, which is the foundation of NETSCOUT’s highly scalable service assurance architecture. The ASI technology is running on the InfiniStream Intelligent Data Sources and visualized by the nGeniusONE platform, which allows for a meaningful and contextual view of all interrelationships and dependencies with deep granularity of network data.

Operational Impact

The results from utilizing NETSCOUT and its solutions have been measurable – and noticeable. Says Yumul, “With NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, you get an overall or complete end-to-end view of application and network status in a single dashboard pane.”
One KPI that was especially pleasing to Fidelity was the improvement of time spent in the war room. Before NETSCOUT, Fidelity spent on average 10-20 hours in the war room per core incident. After deploying NETSCOUT solutions, it dropped to no more than five hours – a two to four times improvement.
MTTR was reduced as well by an incredible 80 percent or greater, says Yumul. But that’s not all. Overall, every network monitoring KPI not only improved, but substantially so. Problem identification, service performance management, MTTK, service disruptions and time spent troubleshooting – all improved from 50 to 74 percent, Yumul says.

Quantitative Benefit

Time spent in the war room per core incident dropped to no more than five hours – a two to four times improvement.
MTTR was reduced by an incredible 80 percent or greater.
Overall, every network monitoring KPI not only improved, but substantially so. Problem identification, service performance management, MTTK, service disruptions and time spent troubleshooting – all improved from 50 to 74 percent.
Capital expenditures were reduced with the overall performance management of Fidelity’s IT infrastructure by up to nine percent.