Centreon’s IT monitoring solution helps Fondation de France achieve its goal of efficiency, traceability and transparency.
Challenges
- Guarantee visibility across Fondation de France’s entire IT process
- Standardize monitoring to optimize the work of the IT team
- Provide information and communicate transparently about the service’s activity
Solution : Centreon
Customer Benefits
- Centralization of data which facilitates management and decision-making
- Monitoring automation and standardization to optimize operational work
- Development of best practices in line with the foundation’s governance philosophy
The Full Story
Fondation de France was created in 1969 and is France’s leading philanthropic network. As a foundation working for all causes, it acts in all areas of public interest via its own action programs and by
facilitating the work of the 828 funds and foundations under its umbrella. Independent and private, it does not receive any grants and can only continue it works thanks to the generosity of donors and testators.
In view of its status and its specific line of work, the financial resources of the Fondation de France are subject to regular audits and controls. These obligations have a direct impact on its IS (which, consequently, must be able to trace and protect processes). In order to guarantee correct operation and the quality of the service delivered, the Internal Resources Department implemented a monitoring strategy using Centreon solutions in 2006. Over more than 10 years, its good practices and monitoring scope have changed markedly, in step with the functional improvements proposed by Centreon, enabling it to offer a high level of quality for its IT resources.
“In order to take into account the specificities of our work, it is imperative that our IS respond to issues surrounding the traceability of financial resources and transparency.”
The Fondation de France seeks to develop philanthropy in France. With its 196 employees, and supported by 504 volunteers and 410,000 donors, it supports projects run by NGOs, community groups and individuals (9,100 in 2016, i.e. nearly 174 million euros). It supports 828 foundations, providing them with all necessary means and services to take action on their key issues. “Our foundation is private and independent, and does not receive any grants”, indicates Sébastien Bernard, IT Operations Manager at Fondation de France. “In this respect, it makes it a point of honor to guarantee the efficiency of donations and real transparency around its work. That is why IT must be able to trace business line processes and provide appropriate information during the various checks to which it is subject, be they internal through the auditors or external through the Controller and Auditor General.” Since 2006, the Internal Resources Department, a team of fifteen or so, has been equipped with a monitoring solution assisting the IT department in its role of ensuring optimal operational quality and meeting its specific requirements. The Operations team, which in particular guarantees quality of service for the foundation’s entire business line application environment (CRM, ERP, financial management, etc.), has expanded over the years and now numbers some 43 people.
“With Centreon, we have gone beyond technical monitoring towards monitoring of applications, as well as management and decision support tools.”
“Initially, we opted for Oréon (which has since become Centreon) and we have developed our monitoring at the same pace as the software solution”, explains Sébastien Bernard. “We are using the Centreon solution which enables us to automate the surveillance of numerous application processes, something which is useful for a small organization like ours where every project manager manages a large portfolio of applications. Moreover, the measures provided by Centreon enable us to objectively report on the availability of applications and infrastructure.” The decision to develop a monitoring strategy was not driven by the IT scale itself (350 hosts over 2 sites, 4,500 services) but rather by the level of quality required for use of the IT resources. That is why the IT Operations team invested in the Centreon solution, in training and in the associated best practices in order to go beyond simple technical monitoring. “We have expanded our monitoring scope and we are generating synthetic dashboards. We share them with the entire IT department in the form of monthly reports which provide us upstream with KPIs on the availability and performance of our applications”, clarifies Sébastien Berbard. “We generate reports which we supplement with service mapping in order to create an applicative vision of monitoring which is coherent with the reality of our IT services.” On a day-to-day basis, the IT Operations team also uses Centreon to better manage and detect incidents and to limit any impact on its IS during IT failures. Another strength is the excellent technical and commercial relationships with the Centreon teams and the software publisher’s listening skills, something confirmed by the IT Operations Manager who says that “it is a pleasure to work with them”.
“The benefits provided by Centreon, such as the use of monitoring data and the release of indicators, have a direct impact on how Fondation de France operates.”
The IT Operations team has also observed that the Centreon solution really influences how it works, something which has led to an evolution towards better practices over the years. “We particularly appreciate the standardization of probes (plugins) which simplifies our day-to-day work, the fact that the product is open source which enables us to develop our own plugins and the possibilities provided by the aggregation of data collected via Centreon service mapping, analytics and reports and views or dashboards”, emphasizes Sébastien Bernard. “Thanks to Centreon, the team has developed its methods and practices and is able to produce a high level of quality of service. Centreon helps us fulfill our tasks and provides us with factual elements which reflect as closely as possible the reality of our IS in order to manage IT resources and optimize our investments.”
“With Centreon, we are moving away from the subjective and perception to work on concrete and coherent data in order to improve our efficiency on a daily basis. For us, it has become inconceivable to fulfill our duties without this kind of tool.”
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