Goodyear Uses NETSCOUT to Improve Cost-Efficiency and Tune Quality of Service Across Global Network

28 Jul 2003

World's Largest Tire Company Uses nGenius to Make Strategic Improvements Across Network Spanning 28 Countries and 200 Locations

WESTFORD, Mass., July 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NetScout Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTCT), a leading provider of enterprise-wide network performance management solutions, today announced that The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is using the nGenius(R) Performance Management System to improve performance and cost-efficiencies across its global IT infrastructure. NetScout's nGenius solution is providing superior views of network activity and application performance that help the world's largest tire maker understand how its many operating divisions and retail sites around the world use the company's network resources. Using this information, Goodyear can then plan and monitor the success of cost-controlling initiatives such as network consolidation, virtual private networking and quality-of-service.

Goodyear is a $14 billion global company that manufactures tires, power transmission belts, hoses, other rubber products and rubber-related chemicals for worldwide distribution. Its extensive manufacturing, logistics, supplier and other operations all rely on the network. More than 2,000 retail sites tie into the network via satellite to process product orders and credit card transactions. With such significant resources to manage, an overarching monitoring and reporting solution such as nGenius is needed to help IT and business managers drive the infrastructure toward a common set of goals. "The nGenius solution has allowed us to improve services and manage costs better for thousands of end-users," said Dirk Zabel, network services consultant for Goodyear. "We want to assure that all of our operations receive the IT resources they require, but we also want them to be accountable for the proper consumption of those resources. For example, nGenius reports help our business managers understand how their employees' IT usage can contribute to rising costs. Instead of just showing network utilization as traditional products do, the nGenius solution breaks out the bandwidth consumption of individual applications and groups of users so we can influence end user behavior or justify costs -- whichever is needed."

nGenius real-time and historical views of bandwidth consumption and application behavior in the network have helped Goodyear move forward with many of its IT cost-controlling initiatives, such as implementing quality-of- service. By understanding exact patterns of bandwidth consumption across the network, which applications perform poorly under constrained delivery mechanisms and where important streams of traffic exist, the IT organization can design better schemes for quality-of-service that won't backfire unexpectedly on mission-critical traffic. The ability to see exactly what business traffic is traversing the frame relay links to its many remote operations have also allowed the IT department to move low volume and non- essential types of traffic to more economical types of delivery such as virtual private networking.

In support of day-to-day operations, Goodyear must also introduce new applications tailored to specific aspects of the business. As part of this, new applications are developed and tested in the LAN and then deployed fully across the WAN. Prior to leveraging nGenius, problems such as slow response times with new applications were often blamed on the WAN. Now using nGenius, Goodyear can easily separate application design issues from network issues, eliminate finger-pointing and proceed with deployment.

"The nGenius solution has helped us identify problems on the network coming from end users," Zabel added. "The ability to see the traffic flows and detect anomalies such as improper software downloads at the wrong time of day, have allowed our help desk to respond more quickly to complaints of slowness and provide simple feedback that resolves unnecessary problems quickly and permanently. nGenius delivers critical, detailed information from across our global network right to our fingertips. We know exactly what's going on and can efficiently plan projects, improve troubleshooting and proactively assure services to stay ahead of problems."

"NetScout helps global enterprises such as Goodyear gain control of their overall network, while also saving costs and cutting down on the clutter that impedes IT efficiency," said Jim Frey, vice president of marketing at NetScout. "Goodyear was faced with the challenge of better understanding its network so it could give responsibility back to internal organizations and prevent problems both at home and thousands of miles away. The nGenius solution's detailed remote data gathering capabilities, shared reporting features and ease-of-use make it ideal for global organizations looking to gain more visibility into network performance without having to deploy multiple solutions."

About NetScout Systems, Inc.

NetScout Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTCT) is a market leader and pioneer of integrated network performance management products that unify performance across the enterprise. NetScout's nGenius(R) Performance Management System is helping more than 3000 leading companies increase their return on infrastructure investments by optimizing the performance of networks and applications according to business priorities. NetScout is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts and has offices worldwide. Further information is available at http://www.netscout.com.

About Goodyear

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (NYSE: GT) is the world's largest tire company. Headquartered in Akron, Ohio, the company manufactures tires, engineered rubber products and chemicals in more than 85 facilities in 28 countries. It has marketing operations in almost every country around the world. Goodyear employs about 92,000 people worldwide. Further information is available at http://www.goodyear.com.

NetScout and the NetScout logo, and nGenius are registered trademarks of NetScout Systems, Inc. CDM and the CDM logo, Universal Response Time, Power Alarms, Workspaces and MasterCare and the MasterCare logo, are trademarks of NetScout Systems, Inc. Other brands, product names and trademarks are property of their respective owners. NetScout reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to make changes at any time in its technical information and specifications, and service and support programs.

    For Further Information:
     Peggy Flynn              Dawn Sullivan
     NetScout Systems         Schwartz Communications, Inc.
     (978) 614-4162           (781) 684-0770
     flynnp@netscout.com      netscout@schwartz-pr.com

SOURCE NetScout Systems, Inc.