JGC Corporation Enhances Application Performance with OPNET
Tomohiro Uchino
Principal Network Administrator
JGC Corporation case study
JGC Corporation is a leading builder of gas processing and liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants worldwide. Founded in 1928 as Japan's first engineering contractor, JGC has since worked on more than 20,000 projects in almost 70 countries.
JGC’s Information Technology Department designs and operates several types of secure networks that link more than 60 active offices all over the world. Their present goal is to understand how their in-house applications can be optimized to support project sites located in some of the most remote locations of the globe. JGC believes that optimizing the network is the key to ensure maximum availability, integrity, and confidentiality of information—directly impacting the project performance and quality they require.
JGC Addresses End-to-End Application Performance Management with OPNET
JGC uses OPNET for application performance management. Before they introduced OPNET’s ACE™ Analyst for better end-to-end visibility for analysis and troubleshooting of their applications, the IT Department had difficulty demonstrating the rationale and effectiveness of their internal infrastructure proposals to other JGC sections. Of key value to JGC are OPNET’s intuitive and professionalquality reports, which have made their internal authorization process much easier and faster.
OPNET’s ACE Analyst is not limited to expediting JGC’s internal authorization process, but also enables faster troubleshooting. When they experienced a serious delay in their application performance for transactions between their Pakistan office and the main data center at their Japan headquarters, satellite bandwidth was believed to be the root cause of this delay. However, when they performed a deeper analysis with OPNET’s ACE Analyst, they found that the real cause of the problem was not lack of bandwidth but rather the latency.
Based on this result, JGC’s IT Department recommended switching to optical fiber cable rather than increasing the bandwidth of their satellite link. The proposed solution proved to be successful. Others in the company were very impressed by how effectively OPNET’s solution uncovered the real cause of the problem and helped them address it. Tomohiro Uchino, Principal Network Administrator for JGC stated, “This is just one example of our successful uses of OPNET. We have been able to shorten the time for troubleshooting across the board for our applications.”
OPNET Enables Cost-Effective Infrastructure Planning
JGC also utilizes OPNET for infrastructure planning. In order to effectively establish and operate project networks in a wide variety of locations and conditions, JGC monitors application system behavior over unstable connections such as satellite links and the Internet. In Pakistan and Indonesia, they succeeded in reducing the response time of their applications by approximately 75%, primarily as a result of traffic analysis within IT Guru® Network Planner. In doing so, the productivity of hundreds staff at remote sites was improved sharply, enabling their remote sites to more substantially contribute to the company’s recent successes.
OPNET Delivers Broad Value for JGC
JGC uses OPNET to manage application performance, plan network infrastructure, and to ensure consistency and reliability for thousands of staff across the enterprise network. JGC continues to design communication environments for some of the most remote regions of the world, from the Sahara desert to the jungles of Papua, New Guinea. A primary goal is to deeply understand each of JGC’s application systems and produce guidelines for its use in such environments. Network devices will likewise be standardized and optimized using the knowledge gained from OPNET products.
Considering these successful use cases, Tomohiro Uchino believes that OPNET will be very effective for network troubleshooting, analysis, and design. With full support from other JGC departments, he concluded, ”The comprehensive suite of solutions provided by OPNET will enable better and more effective design and integration of all of our network systems.”
Tomohiro Uchino
Principal Network
Administrator
JGC Corporation
