Released on: September 24, 2008, 12:01 pm

Press Release Author: CCSS (USA) Corporation

Industry: Software

Press Release Summary: QSystem Monitor, the performance and application monitoring
solution created by the IBM® i and System i™ specialists, CCSS, has helped logistics
experts Nippon Express (USA) Inc to reduce downtime through vigilant monitoring of
their important IBM WebSphere® MQ* environment.

Press Release Body: QSystem Monitor, the performance and application monitoring
solution created by the IBM® i and System i™ specialists, CCSS, has helped logistics
experts Nippon Express (USA) Inc to reduce downtime through vigilant monitoring of
their important IBM WebSphere® MQ* environment. New York based Nippon Express rely
heavily on the MQ application as it provides a direct communications channel to US
customs, and as such, is an integral part of their business process. Any undetected
problems in the environment can potentially seize this vital communications link and
impact the otherwise reliable flow of logistics that Nippon’s customers depend on.

The team at Nippon operate two System i platforms which directly support the
business applications and productivity of over 1,500 users. Helping them to maintain
their high standards of efficiency for these systems is QSystem Monitor, one of
three CCSS solutions currently installed. With an immense capacity for monitoring
virtually any component in the IBM i environment, QSystem Monitor recently added
application monitoring to the rich list of functionality that already includes
system, disk, network, job and availability monitoring. With this solution in place,
Nippon is able to extend their pro-active approach to systems monitoring to their MQ
environment with dedicated monitors for MQ Queue Managers, Listeners, Channels and
Queues.

Shin Nakamura, Systems Analyst at Nippon Express, explains the importance of this
functionality in their demanding environment, “We made some very significant gains
with the CCSS solutions, from freeing up valuable disk space by removing millions of
deleted records to achieving 84% time improvement in important data transfers, but
like all System i shops, we’re not immune to issues and unforeseen events. It only
takes a single situation where downtime was saved and customers were spared the
resulting inconvenience to quantify the value of a solution that prevents all that.
We faced that very situation recently; fortunately QSystem Monitor alerted us and we
were able to rectify the problem before there was any negative impact on our
customers. The time and money saved by avoiding downtime was immediately obvious.”

The recent situation at Nippon typifies one of the many circumstances that can lead
to potential problems. In this case, a member of their applications team was
troubleshooting some issues on an MQ Queue, and as a matter of routine, contacted
the 3rd party vendor. As sometimes happens, the vendor required remote access to
carry out the troubleshooting task. QSystem Monitor immediately alerted Nakamura to
the fact that the MQ application was down and he was able to restart it. An
investigation of the problem determined that the 3rd party vendor had shut down the
whole MQ subsystem in his troubleshooting exercise and had forgotten to restart it.

Nakamura says, “It could have been a lot worse; if QSystem Monitor was not
installed, we could have been faced with several hours of downtime. In the logistics
business, those few hours can mean the difference between a vital shipment leaving
or arriving on time, or being held up in customs because we lost the comms link with
them. Our reputation is built on efficiency so we can’t afford to suffer with these
kinds of delays. Thankfully with QSystem Monitor in place, we don’t have to.”

Since implementing the CCSS solutions, Nippon has been able to measure that each
operator spends 87% less time monitoring and, as this case shows, still keeps one
step ahead of any system issues. In this example, a critical status monitor was
tripped when the subsystem went down. These status monitors can be implemented
throughout the application so when a problem is detected and a status monitor
triggered, a team like Nippon’s can quickly pinpoint the cause of the problem and in
many cases take action to prevent it from reoccurring in the future. Typically,
Nippon is able to use the history logs to reduce problem resolution time from 60
minutes to 10 minutes. Performance indicators on MQ Channels including Bytes
Received/second, Bytes Sent/second, Compression Ratio, Compression Time, Exit
Program Time, and Network Time also offer valuable insights when analyzing or
investigating issues.

WebSphere MQ monitoring is available in QSystem Monitor V12 (R9).

* IBM WebSphere MQ formerly known as MQSeries®.

ENDS




About CCSS

CCSS develops, supports and markets IBM i (on IBM Power™ Systems, AS/400®, iSeries®,
and System i) performance monitoring and reporting, message management and remote
management solutions. An Advanced IBM Business Partner, CCSS develops powerful
solutions to support some of the world’s most demanding IBM i environments across
many industries including insurance, banking, pharmaceutical and manufacturing. All
CCSS solutions are IBM ServerProven.

Existing customers that rely on CCSS’s feature-rich solutions include leading
organizations such as Volvo, Mattel, Newell-Rubbermaid, The Royal Bank of Scotland,
Siemens Medical, RWE npower and Waterstone’s.

CCSS is headquartered in Gillingham, Kent, UK with key regional headquarters in
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Bonn, Germany and Makati City, Philippines together
with a global agent network spanning Portugal, Brazil, the Netherlands, Switzerland
and Sweden.

IBM, System i, WebSphere, MQSeries, Power Systems, AS/400, iSeries are trademarks of
International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries,
or both.

Web Site: http://www.ccssltd.com

Contact Details: 2435 Lynn Road
Lynnbrooke Centre, Suite 100
Raleigh, NC 27612
919 256 8260
919 256 8271 (fax)