Sungard Case Study

ZigiOps integrated SunGard AS IT systems, Micro Focus Operations Bridge and ServiceNow, to give them a complete overview of their IT infrastructure in real time. This allows them to filter out noise and unnecessary information and concentrate on critical tasks. Our integration platform automated Sungard AS processes to enhance cross-team collaboration, improve operational efficiency, and help them resolve issues faster than ever.

The Client:

Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS) provides IT recovery and disaster management services to businesses to help them become more resilient and minimize risk. They have 40 years of experience with disaster recovery and a team of 3000 IT professionals. Over 70% of Fortune 100 companies trust them.

Challenge overview:

SunGard AS IT department uses multiple enterprise software tools. Micro Focus OBM is their central IT Operations Management (ITOM) system, while ServiceNow is their main IT Service Management (ITSM) tool. Various departments and teams use in-house scripts and monitoring applications, such as Micro Focus SiteScope, to monitor different aspects of SunGard AS IT infrastructure.

Because of this, SunGard AS needed an integration solution to forward their Event data from OBM to ServiceNow, that would also allow them to use customer-submitted Change Requests from ServiceNow to create Downtimes in OBM.

They considered a few possibilities:

• Replace some of the existing software tools with others to work with fewer vendors
• Look for an integration platform to connect all applications
• Develop a solution internally

After weighing all the pros and cons of the different options, they decided to go with ZigiWave's no-code integration platform, ZigiOps.

The Solution:

ZigiOps solved SunGard AS business challenge by allowing them to integrate monitoring data from OBM to ServiceNow and vice versa.

Initially, the Events integration was rather straightforward, but with time, there was a demand to fortify it to handle the high workload, as monitoring data increased. For this reason, the ZigiWave team implemented advanced filtering features and enhanced the backward synchronization workflow to ease the technical efforts of SunGard AS engineering teams. ZigiOps ability to support complex conditional mapping requirements allowed ZigiWave and SunGard AS teams to work together and create multiple smart transformations based on source data. The end result was a fully automated integration that can operate autonomously with no manual interference.

The Downtimes integration was enhanced several times Due to the specifics of the Change Requests of ServiceNow, ZigiWave's team needed to plan and develop additional features to handle the complexity of SunGard AS use case. This allowed our client to detect new Change Requests and create, update, or cancel Downtimes in multiple OBM instances at once. In addition, we improved the integration to sync created Downtimes to tickets opened by end customers. This way, SunGard AS clients could make sure Downtimes were created successfully in OBM, and that all selected CIs were in maintenance mode.

Integrated Data Types

OBM > ServiceNow

• Events > Incidents

ServiceNow > OBM

• Change Requests > Downtimes

Outcomes & Results

The two integrations gave SunGard AS the possibility to:

• Forward data from OBM to ServiceNow to take advantage of ServiceNow's enhanced incident management capabilities
• Consolidate and align monitoring, IT Operations Management (ITOM), and IT Service Management (ITSM)
• Synchronize and automate change management with additional Downtime creation in backup OBM instances
• Have a complete overview of their operations and each element of their IT infrastructure.

For the first integration (Events to Incidents), ZigiOps receives event data from OBM and forwards it to ServiceNow to create new incidents. Using ZigiOps advanced filtering capabilities allowed SunGard AS team to forward the critical events that needed additional engineer attention, thus reducing the overall number of critical incidents.

In the second integration, ZigiOps collects Change Requests (Maintenance Windows) from ServiceNow and creates Downtimes in OBM. Now, whenever SunGard AS customers need to put specific topology infrastructure elements in maintenance, they simply submit a Change Request on the ServiceNow site to create downtime in OBM. This allows them to stop monitoring temporarily and avoid event storms and customer escalations. As a result, ServiceNow could become SunGard AS central service management platform, provide IT teams with all necessary details and keep their ITSM/ITOM data in sync.

Using ZigiOps allowed SunGard AS to automate the integration process completely. All ITOM/ITSM tools are now in sync, meaning that anyone can instantly check the status of each Event, Incident, or Change Request. The number of incidents is now lower, which helps SunGard AS filter out noise and unnecessary information and concentrate on critical tasks.

ZigiOps allowed SunGard AS to sync multiple OBM and ServiceNow instances, and to fully cross-integrate their ITOM/ITSM systems. In addition, ZigiOps easy upgrade process guarantees the quick delivery and implementation of new features, performance improvements, and security patches.

Thanks to the platforms advanced integration capabilities, ZigiOps solves SunGard AS business challenge by providing a complete overview of their operations and aligning ITSM and ITOM.