The Background
MobiTV is the first mobile television and digital radio service provider for cellular, WiFi and broadband enabled devices. The MobiTV service is available in United States through Sprint, Cingular, Alltel, in the United Kingdom through 3 and Orange, and to Canadian customers through Bell Canada, Rogers and TELUS Mobility. The Emmy Award winning service has more than one million paying subscribers and offers many popular TV channels from content providers, such as MSNBC, ABC News Now, CNN, Fox News, Fox Sports, ESPN 3GTV, NBC Mobile, CNBC, The Discovery Channel, TLC, The Weather Channel.
The Network
MobiTV's IT infrastrcture is a dynamic environment that is accessed by a range of internal and external users at all levels of its operation. The number of devices on its corporate IT network has grown exponentially over the past year. At the same time, the IT management staff at MobiTV has quadrupled to support the growth of its IT infrastructure.
The Challenge
At the beginning of its operation, MobiTV was able to document its IT network and maintain its inventory of IP addresses in a simple spreadsheet application. As the networking technology implemented on its IT infrastructure became virtualized and more sophisticated, MobiTV was forced to incorporate time consuming manual tasks into its IT management processes to keep track of its network infrastructure.
Soon, the number of users and devices on the network expanded to a point that maintaining a basic understanding off its IT infrastructure became difficult. Consequently and as time passed, MobiTV felt it lacked a starting point for implementing initiatives to secure the use of its IT infrastructure.
The Solution
MobiTV IT management quickly realized that it needed to take action to regain control of its IT network and establish a baseline understanding of its IT infrastructure.
MobiTV evaluated a range of network discovery tools from complex systems designed for large enterprise networks to complementary utilities included in the smaller enterprise management applications. However, none were capable of delivering a complete documentation of its entire network.
At the start of 2006, Insightix Visibility was implemented at MobiTV's headquarters in Northern California. Without the aide of a single software agent, Insightix Visibility accurately mapped MobiTV's entire IT network within an hour. Insightix Visibility intelligently combined active and passive discovery methods to reach all levels of MobiTV's IT infrastructure, including secured network space behind firewalls and virtual devices not readily identifiable on the domain.
MobiTV then created its first cohesive network documentation file by exporting the network map visualized by Insightix Visibility to Visio. The network documentation file exported to Visio consisted of a comprehensive physical network topology map that included all elements on the network, including routers, switches, hubs, servers, workstations, printers and virtual devices.
"Insightix Visibility simplifies network documentation into a matter of a few mouse clicks," commented Eric Tebelak, Director of IT at MobiTV.
MobiTV now uses the real-time monitoring features of Insightix Visibility to create network documentation snapshots on-demand. At any given time, MobiTV now knows the exact location and status of all devices on its network and can locate specific devices of interest in real-time.
MobiTV's Director of IT further explained, "By automating our network documentation requirements with Insightix Visibility, we maintain a real-time baseline understanding our IT infrastructure. This enables us to think strategically and implement with confidence new IT initiatives that support the growth of our business."