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“Zenprise for BlackBerry nailed our latency problem on the first try. In my opinion, it paid for itself in one day,” said Steve Conley, Director of IT, Boston Red Sox.
It’s no secret that the Boston Red Sox — the reigning World Series champions for the second time in four seasons — have reaped the benefits of first-class talent scouting. The Red Sox eagle-eyed scouts are constantly traversing the globe in search of the next Jonathan Papelbon. To be successful, the talent scouts rely on their BlackBerry® smartphones to make decisions quickly and communicate with team executives and the front office. Whether they are evaluating prospective players in the Dominican Republic or across town at a local high school, these BlackBerry users require always-on access to their email, calendars, and phones. Any downtime or email delay could forfeit key talent to another Major League Baseball club.
Zenprise Makes the Play of the Night
To meet the goal of improving efficiencies communicating with people in the field, the Red Sox IT organization recently extended BlackBerry smartphones to talent scouts, team executives, and front office personnel. As IT significantly ramped up the number of BlackBerry users, it started to push the boundaries of how the system was set up. “We started getting latency problems on the system,” said Steve Conley, Director of IT for the Red Sox. “Email was lagging on BlackBerry smartphones and our users were starting to freak out over even short delays. Taking our time to work through the problem was not an option. We had to fix it immediately.”
After many hours spent on support calls, Conley realized that he needed a comprehensive solution that examined the health of his entire BlackBerry infrastructure, including BlackBerry® Enterprise Server (BES), Microsoft® Exchange server, Active Directory®, DNS servers, Research in Motion service, and cell phone carriers. In addition, this solution must quickly and proactively detect end-user problems and monitor BES performance.
Amidst his vendor search, Conley read a Network World article featuring Zenprise for BlackBerry. His research soon proved that Zenprise was the only service-management solution available on the market that proactively monitors both BlackBerry and Microsoft Exchange. Zenprise’s ability to track every component of the email infrastructure and provide early detection and resolution of problems was a value Conley’s executive team could appreciate. Conley immediately contacted Zenprise and within the same day installed the product. “Zenprise nailed our latency problem on the first try,” he said.. “In my opinion, it paid for itself in one day.”
Precise Troubleshooting Averts Potential Curveballs
Within a week of installing Zenprise, Conley’s IT group began resolving complex, yet often hidden, BlackBerry infrastructure problems. Zenprise identified a server load/user distribution issue between BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Microsoft Exchange — a common capacity problem for organizations with an expanding number of BlackBerry users. Because the Exchange server was overburdened with users and didn’t have enough capacity, there were availability problems with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
“We found a major issue that was causing a lot of our problems.. On the BlackBerry software side, we needed to split our BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the SQL server. They were running on one box, which was fine when we had fewer users, but when we began to grew , we started to put too much on the box. And on the Exchange side, we were getting blocked worker threads when we ran our backup jobs.”
Conley continued, “We essentially rebooted the BlackBerry Enterprise Server every time because we didn’t know what else to do. It was the worst kind of IT problem that you can have because we have a multi-vendor, complex environment. Zenprise has allowed us to take an independent third-party perspective of both BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Microsoft Exchange Server, providing a true end-to-end view. It actually correlated all of the errors and found the root cause of the problem.”
Once the root cause was isolated, Zenprise delivered detailed instructions, including visual step-by-step process flow charts for fixing the problem. “Zenprise provides a service that no other solution can by showing where the disconnect is, and what you need to do to fix it,” said Conley.
Proactive Resolution Delivers When It Matters Most
After only 45 days on the job, Zenprise has successfully resolved five major issues with the BlackBerry smartphone, proving itself an important starting player in the Red Sox lineup. Zenprise now monitors the organization’s entire BlackBerry infrastructure to ensure critical up-time and get ahead of issues before they impact users, including the team’s executive users who demand the highest levels of service.
In fact, Zenprise has eliminated the 4:00 AM panic calls from high-profile executives who experience problems with their BlackBerry smartphone. He further explained, “When there are potential issues, we’re able to alert our users in advance saying, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re on it. We’ll have a solution within the hour, or an update.’ And that is invaluable.”
Conley shared how Zenprise proactively identified an issue on an end-user’s BlackBerry smartphone in virtual real-time for two executives who were on a business trip to New Hampshire. “We were able to proactively let them know that their BlackBerry smartphones were having delays. We told them that they needed to do a ‘star-2-2-A-9-9,’ because their phones were out of service. As a result, we were able to reach out and touch them before they were frustrated and called us.”
Working Smarter Builds a Champion Team
According to Conley, one of Zenprise’s added benefits is how it has helped his five-person IT team gain immediate BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Microsoft Exchange expertise. “Zenprise has helped us become more knowledgeable not only in our BlackBerry Enterprise Server environment, but our overall views into how we're dealing with Exchange.”
When a BlackBerry user does call in with a problem, the team’s first response is to view the Zenprise dashboard for an immediate answer. “The beauty of Zenprise is it puts a visual on the dashboard,” said Conley. “With this indicator visualized on the message flow icons, it’s very easy to understand how each component relates to the other and spot a problem within the entire infrastructure.”
If Conley’s team needs further assistance, he doesn’t hesitate to reach out to Zenprise’s support organization for additional help. Conley elaborates, “They’ve bent over backwards for us. If we didn’t understand something, they provided extra detail to tell us exactly how something was working. They also regularly send automatic updates via the servers so we can stay on top of the latest issues experienced on our BlackBerry smartphones.”
As Conley concludes, “Zenprise has helped us to become more proactive than reactive, which is right inline with our organization’s goals and objectives. By investing in Zenprise, we’ve become more efficient and can add more services to our BlackBerry user community.”
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