Introduction
Khimji Ramdas (KR) has been in business since 1870, which makes them one of the oldest and most reputed business conglomerates in the Sultanate of Oman. Over the last 160+ years they have successfully been able to build the trust of some of the largest and most premium global brands in the region of Oman. With the commitment and success that KR has had over the years, his majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin, stated that KR, on the path to build its goal, is building a fast-growing and futuristic Oman. Mr. Chandrashekhar Jajware, CIO, Khimji Ramdas had the herculean task of organizing the entire IT system and teams that were working in silos.
“We have a very strict evaluation process, so it took some time to come to a conclusion. ManageEngine won in some crucial areas including feature & functionality, licensing model, initial technical support and commitment towards providing quick solution. This impressed all my team members on board and made it easy to make a unanimous decision. Usually, vendors have price as their USP but we knew our requirements pretty well and after looking at the strength of the product, we were completely convinced, however I must say it was very competitively priced. ”
-Mr.Chandrashekhar Jajware,CIO, Khimji.
How did it all start?
On being asked how it all began and what prompted him and his team to use ManageEngine Mr. Chandra says “I knew ManageEngine from its early days and in my previous role, I came across ManageEngine’s products, which even back then were really easy to use and did the job pretty well. When I joined Khimji Ramdas a few years ago, my main objective was to align all locations on to a single NOC and put a process in place.”
Today the IT infrastructure of KR is spread across 160 locations in Oman and Dubai. It has a team of 40+ engineers, it becomes extremely difficult to manage these locations’ IT requirements with various management tools. Mr. Chandra says “Our IT infrastructure is a multi-vendor model, though each vendor provides a management console, we wanted :
- to get in-depth analysis of technology irrespective of vendors
- to get more pro-active in terms of IT management, monitoring and reporting.
That’s when we started evaluating products in market including ManageEngine.”
Enter ManageEngine IT360
Mr. Chandra and others in KR had a long check list of parameters that a management tool should have. There were few other vendors along with ManageEngine who were considered for evaluation. Considering the heterogeneous infrastructure and requirements, which were put forward by KR to monitor their applications, network devices, managing tickets and above all a single console which could give a birds-eye view to all their locations; ManageEngine IT360 was presented to them for evaluation.
Mr. Chandra continues “We have a very strict evaluation process, so it took some time to come to a conclusion. ManageEngine won in some crucial areas including feature & functionality, licensing model, initial technical support and commitment towards providing quick solution. This impressed all my team members on board and made it easy to make a unanimous decision. Usually, vendors have price as their USP but we knew our requirements pretty well and after looking at the strength of the product, we were completely convinced, however I must say it was very competitively priced.”
After successful evaluation of the product, Khimji Ramdas was given with IT360- Enterprise Edition license. IT360-Enterprise edition is a highly scalable version with probe-central architecture and is used in larger deployments comprising of multiple locations to monitor.
“It’s been more than two years since we started using IT360. The product has come a long way since then. Today I can’t imagine my IT infrastructure without this product. IT360 touches all points of my IT and gives a consolidated view. It becomes extremely easy to manage things with the way role and need specific customized reports are generated by the product.”
On being asked about the critical features that he as a CIO and his team as users admire, he quickly responds saying, “I like the dashboard and the way it is bundled and designed, it gives me a very simplified and holistic view of the various modules in IT. Apart from this, I think my team likes the way data and its access is segmented according to the role, which brings more accountability at work, , the integration of ITIL modules, helps my team in managing thousands of tickets efficiently with best practices. It reduces a lot of operational hours as monitoring, ticketing and troubleshooting are done from one tool. This absolutely would have been chaotic without a tool like IT360”
No tool is complete without a great support from the vendor and ManageEngine as a vendor is known for providing great support to its valuable customers around the world. This has helped the organization to win the confidence of more than 73,000+ customers in over 190 countries. On being asked about Khimji Ramdas’ experience with ManageEngine’s technical support, “I think the team is very happy with the response rate and solution provided to them, however, I would like to add that there is still scope for improvements and I would like ManageEngine to stay as flexible as they are today.” Mr. Chandra concludes
