In a deal worth around €120k, application and network performance management company Data Edge, based in Bray, Co Wicklow has deployed CA Spectrum network fault manager on Elavon's Europe-wide finance network.

Elavon is a global provider in financial transaction processing, and employs more than 350 people at Cherrywood and Arklow.  Its transaction processing network links tens of thousands of credit card terminals in shops, hotels, restaurants and other outlets across Europe, and allows customers to charge purchases to their cards wherever they are. 

Elavon processes more than 2 billion transactions worth more than €200 billion globally each year, and every  transaction on the Elavon system is time critical. Card authorisations that are slow or fail completely lead to queues in shops, frustrated consumers and worst of all, lost sales. Customers and merchants alike need to be sure that credit card transactions will be quickly and securely processed. 

A fast, dependable system demands a highly reliable, high performance infrastructure with minimal downtime.  Data Edge's installation allows Elavon to monitor its network in real time and identify a problem's root cause with pinpoint accuracy, meaning that issues can be dealt with before they affect users.

On a well designed system like Elavon's, where extensive redundancy and diversity are built in, it can be difficult to spot faults and even more difficult to identify their root cause.  Data Edge's solution is now being used to monitor the links to every credit card terminal on Elavon's Europe-wide transaction processing network.

The deployment aims to give faster and more reliable transactions for credit & debit card users.  Within minutes of installation, CA Spectrum automatically started to map Elavon's network across 15 countries, and immediately began analysing performance and highlighting anomalies.

Chris Garvey (pictured above), European Datacoms Manager, Elavon, said "On a financial network like ours, we must be able to deal with problems before they impact on transactions.  Because the Data Edge solution gives us much better visibility of our network, a fault in the network in Germany was spotted that could have impacted processing.  CA Spectrum identified the root cause immediately and the appropriate response and resources were directed to resolving it before it had an impact on customers."

Established in 1989, Data Edge has exclusive partnerships with some of the world's leading IT and performance management vendors, such as CA, Symmetricom, Spirent and Anritsu. Its managing director, Brian McBride (pictured above) said "We are delighted that we play such an important role helping Elavon as they improve the speed and reliability of credit card transactions throughout Europe. CA Spectrum acts like a smoke alarm - alerting engineers instantly to a problem before it can affect transactions.  With our solution in place, consumers and businesses across Europe can make credit card transactions without hassle."