Multicloud MSP ITS Integra uses Centreon as a unique platform to monitor all their client environments–from cloud to edge

The project in a nutshell

The MSP’s business challenges

• Evolve IT monitoring so it can reach newer infrastructure types (i.e., containers, PaaS, microservices, etc.)
• Meet emerging client demands in terms of business indicators
• Simplify and optimize IT Team training using a single IT monitoring solution

The MSP’s ITOM challenges

• Monitoring heterogeneous infrastructure (i.e., AS400, microservices, private and public cloud services, Office 365, VPNs, etc.)
• Simplify technology deployments for clients
• Integrate IT monitoring and security directly into DevSecOps processes
• Automate ticketing processes by connecting IT monitoring and ITSM tools
• Build observability through robust IT monitoring integration

Main benefits

• Introduction of new value-adding services (dashboards dedicated to top management)
• Elimination of blind spots through complete IT visibility
• Highly accurate view over service quality being delivered and SLA conformity
• Improved MSP reputation thanks to dashboards and KPIs on service delivery

Case study – the full story

ITS Integra, ITS Group’s multicloud-dedicated subsidiary, developed a robust expertise in the outsourced management of ultra-secure IT environments. The Centreon IT monitoring platform has been at the heart of the company’s infrastructure strategy for over 15 years. The long-standing relationship between ITS Integra and Centreon is based on Centreon’s ability to constantly meet the challenges of ITS Integra’s clients and on the ability of ITS Integra’s teams to leverage the full benefits of the Centreon solution.

ITS Integra: a key player with over 20 years of existence

Founded in 1997, ITS Integra posted revenues of €25M in 2020. These results rest on the expertise of 170 employees and superior service, which their ISO 9001, ISO 27001, and France’s Health Data Hosting (HDS) certifications further demonstrate. ITS Integra’s service center provides robust, high availability infrastructure to enterprises, SMBs, public, as well as healthcare organizations. ITS Integra’s expertise spans four main areas: IT operations management, cloud services management, IT automation, as well as security and compliance management.

ITS Integra’s aim is simple: ensure the successful digital transformation of about 300 clients through expertly managing 3 datacenters, 10,000 hosted servers and 15,000 managed servers. To achieve this, ITS Integra has been relying on the Centreon IT monitoring solution since 2006 to manage the performance and monitoring of the entirety of client environments (both shared and dedicated), as Thierry Del-Monte, Director of Engineering at ITS Integra, explains:

Meeting rising clients’ expectations for cloud technologies and business-aware IT monitoring

At ITS Integra, the approach to IT monitoring is meticulous. It’s an integral part of the service portfolio, just as backups are, ranging in complexity levels to better match clients’ requirements. Thierry Del-Monte notes clients are increasingly interested in and aware of the performance of their managed IT services:

Although clients still expect their MSP to monitor infrastructure to be alerted when an issue comes up and be guided on how to remediate it, they also look for more sophisticated IT monitoring. They want indicators on service availability and resource consumption and, more recently, they want their monitoring to be business aware. “Our clients want more than availability rates and RAM consumption out of their monitoring,” explains Thierry Del-Monte. “They want to understand how their IT is monitored, and they need to plan anomaly detection thresholds, and such.”

Managing the impacts of a global health crisis is another area of focus. With widespread telecommuting, the IT system is constantly being scaled to optimize access, and therefore monitoring remote connections counts more than ever before. In the most mature digital businesses, there are new IT monitoring requirements, as Thierry Del-Monte is well aware:

Monitoring AS400 servers and Office 365 with a single solution

One of the main challenges brought by hybrid IT is to have legacy environments and innovative architectures such as PaaS or microservices coexist in the same place and time. ITS Integra needs to monitor both applications in the cloud and AS400 servers, for clients belonging to different business sectors, using a single IT monitoring platform. Thierry Del-Monte points out:

The second challenge brought by hybrid IT is directly related to the first one: securing the IT system and guaranteeing availability by automating a maximum of processes and interconnecting the IT monitoring solution with the rest of the ITOps environment.

Promote automation, self-healing, business KPIs, auto ticketing, as well as Kubernetes and Elastic interconnection

ITS Integra’s teams really appreciate Centreon’s ability to meet the new challenges of hybrid environments as technologies are constantly evolving. Using Centreon, it’s easy to monitor in PaaS mode, reaching Kubernetes and microservices.

Centreon is a pillar of ITS Integra’s toolbox, as Thierry Del-Monte emphasizes: “Centreon is an integral part of our processes, and thanks to a high level of automation, our teams can deliver complete client environments that embed monitoring. We’ve always valued the solution’s flexibility, and over the last few years, the progress Centreon has made in weaving in automation capabilities.  For the record, we even participated in the development of one of the very first Azure Plugin Packs.” 

The Centreon solution is automatically integrated into all client packages, in a DevSecOps approach that is fundamental to ITS Integra. Centreon is also tightly integrated within ITS Integra’s IT system to automate checks, maximize self-healing, and enable auto ticketing in EasyVista. Thierry Del-Monte says such automation goes hand in hand with connecting IT monitoring and observability tools:

Maximizing economies of scale and keeping top management aware of service quality

On top of helping ITS Integra meet daily operational challenges, Centreon helps them meet HR and other strategic challenges. This is among the many advantages that come with managing all client environments with a single IT monitoring platform. Thierry Del-Monte explains:

Above the product’s efficiency and reliability, Centreon meets growing expectations from clients wanting more sophisticated KPIs and dashboards. And requests for such insights do not come only from technical profiles but from CIOs and even business managers who understand the value IT-generated analytics can bring to the organization. Thierry likes that providing such dashboards promote their reputation as an MSP, reaching larger ranks within client organizations:

Looking forward: Connected and business-aware IT monitoring

The world of IT keeps reinventing itself and teams at ITS Integra are just as ready to monitor tomorrow’s environments, with the added confidence that comes with knowing Centreon’s technical support–which they consider to be highly reliable and responsive–will guide them. Confidence is key when clients trust you with their critical data, such as health data (ITS Integra holds a certification for health data hosting). With Centreon’s added power, ITS Integra can reach new heights in providing sophisticated service levels as well as transitioning towards business-aware monitoring. Clients now want monitoring to provide insights on their ERP rather than simply finding out if a given equipment is working or not.

Such expectations from clients are getting more common now, as their IT maturity expands. They can also trust Plugin Packs and Aauto-Ddiscovery capabilities to deal with microservices or containerization expertly. The long-standing synergy between ITS Integra and Centreon still has a lot of ground to cover, as Thierry explains: