The Situation

General Networks Corporation was built on service. The Glendale, Calif., consulting firm provides solutions for information management and workflow efficiency for a diverse group of clients that includes Warner Bros., Lockheed Federal Credit Union, and Honda North America. General Networks is known for its continued service and support of Novell NetWare, the first network operating system that is still a component of most networks, despite the proliferation of newer technologies.

The Problem

"A lot of times you go to a site to assess or audit a network, and the IT staff has no idea what's out there," says Herb Meyerowitz, director of technical services for General Networks. "They don't know what devices are out there, who has access to each server, the status of patch levels and hot fixes, to say nothing of how the current standards and configuration settings have changed over time."

This is not the IT department's fault: servers and routers may be strewn across the continent with databases, operating systems, and other network devices that have not been audited in years. Manually auditing one server is tedious and time-consuming even when you know where it is. Auditing an enterprise is a mind-boggling proposition.

The Solution

Running Ecora's Configuration Auditor has proven to be an essential first step in assessing what's on a client's network so baselines can be established, security tightened, and performance enhanced.

The Benefits

Automated auditing: Ecora software discovers what's on a network, and eliminates the need to manually gather information. "Some of this information could be gathered from the hardware, but that's just it: it would have to be gathered," Meyerowitz says.

Ease of upgrades: "What I like about Ecora is that we can back up a client's original configuration, use it as a baseline, and track any network changes when new devices are added," Meyerowitz says.

End-to-end change management: Ecora eliminates surprises, helps to ensure internal security, accelerates troubleshooting, and provides essential data for business continuity. "It's so automatic, you forget just how much it does," adds Meyerowitz

The Future

General Networks is excited about the release of Ecora's 2.0 product line, which includes Configuration Reporter and Configuration Auditor for Novell NetWare. The Novell product affords a comprehensive set of tools for auditing clients' networks. General Networks is so happy with Ecora products, it intends to resell them to larger clients. "I think when our clients see how easy to run and complete Ecora reports are, they'll see the software as something they must have," Meyerowitz says.