Concord's eHealth Suite Helps KB Toys Ring in Trouble-free Holiday Season.Business/Technology Editors MARLBORO Marlboro or Marlborough (märl`bərō), city (1990 pop. 31,813), Middlesex co., E Mass.; settled on the site of a Native American village 1657, inc. as a city 1890. , Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 2002 eHealth helps largest U.S. mall-based toy retailer through holiday season; provides insight into sales and store activity year-round Concord Communications (Nasdaq: CCRD CCRD Colorado Civil Rights Division CCRD Clear Certainty Rundown CCRD Center for Community Research and Development CCRD Climate Change Research Division (US DoE) CCRD Certified Chiropractic Rehabilitation Doctor ) announced today that KB Toys K•B Toys (previously known as Kay Bee Toys) is a chain of mall-based retail toy stores in the United States. It was founded in 1922 by the Kaufman brothers. It currently operates 605 stores in 44 U.S. states, Puerto Rico as well as Guam. used its eHealth(TM) Suite to monitor its new frame relay A high-speed packet switching protocol used in wide area networks (WANs). Providing a granular service of up to DS3 speed (45 Mbps), it has become popular for LAN to LAN connections across remote distances, and services are offered by most major carriers. network this past holiday. Everyone got what they wanted for Christmas: KB Toys got maximum IT uptime during their busiest season and customers got the toys they wanted, when they wanted them. KB Toys, the largest U.S. mall-based toy retailer with more than 1,300 locations, rolled out its new network last year to create a real-time link between its headquarters and retail stores for accurate insight into sales and inventory. To guarantee this constant visibility into its stores' shelves, KB Toys chose eHealth to watch network traffic, monitor systems and applications, identify usage trends, plan capacity needs, and forewarn fore·warn tr.v. fore·warned, fore·warn·ing, fore·warns To warn in advance. forewarn Verb to warn beforehand Verb 1. them of potential IT problems and downtime The time during which a computer is not functioning due to hardware, operating system or application program failure. . The true test came in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas when KB Toys does 50 percent of its business. During peak usage, eHealth kept KB's IT staff apprised of network usage, monitoring 12,000 data elements. "eHealth made a big difference during our busy holiday season where we can't afford to lose a sale due to low inventory or shipment problems," said Steve Raimer, director of network services and emerging technologies at KB Toys. "eHealth allowed us to proactively monitor and protect our network, the lifeline to our stores, and guarantee we were never out of touch with what toys were selling and what was on the shelves. Moving forward, we will continue to use eHealth to maintain our network's health and ensure smooth operations." It took KB Toys only four hours to get eHealth's LiveHealth(TM), AdvantEDGE(TM) View, SystemEDGE(TM) and eHealth -- Network components up and running. KB Toys can now proactively fix potential problems instead of working reactively. eHealth also allows KB Toys to do capacity planning Determining the required future configuration of hardware and software for a network, datacenter or Web site. There are numerous capacity planning tools on the market used to monitor and analyze the performance of the current hardware and software. , enabling IT to test the impact of new applications and devices on overall infrastructure availability and performance. For example, when the company's loss prevention department wanted to roll out new recording devices on the network, IT used eHealth to determine their impact. eHealth provided easy-to-understand reports that helped IT staff to explain the consequences to non-engineer management members. "Companies that experience critical business spikes can't afford even a second of downtime. eHealth helps them keep their infrastructure at top availability and performance levels so they can make the most of those must-sell times," said Frank Kettenstock, vice president of product marketing at Concord Communications. "With minimal resources, a company can manage its entire network and fend off Verb 1. fend off - prevent the occurrence of; prevent from happening; "Let's avoid a confrontation"; "head off a confrontation"; "avert a strike" deflect, forefend, forfend, head off, avert, stave off, ward off, avoid, debar, obviate costly infrastructure problems quickly and easily with eHealth." About KB Toy Stores A toy store, or toy shop, is a retail business specializing in the services of selling toys. No longer held to the limitations of the brick and mortar outlet, the toy store has successfully created a presence within the e-commerce industry. KB Toys is the nation's largest combined mall-based and online specialty toy retailer, operating more than 1,300 stores in all 50 states, Guam and Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (pwār`tō rē`kō), island (2005 est. pop. 3,917,000), 3,508 sq mi (9,086 sq km), West Indies, c.1,000 mi (1,610 km) SE of Miami, Fla. , doing business as KB Toys, KB Toy Works, KB Toy Outlet, KB Toy Liquidators, KB Toy Express and with online shopping at KBtoys.com (www.kbtoys.com) & eToys (www.etoys.com). KB Toys, a privately held company privately held company A firm whose shares are held within a relatively small circle of owners and are not traded publicly. , is headquartered in Pittsfield, Massachusetts "Pittsfield" redirects here. For other places named Pittsfield, see Pittsfield (disambiguation). Pittsfield is the largest city and county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. . About Concord Communications Concord Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: CCRD) is the market leader in automating technology management of the Internet infrastructure. With its eHealth(TM) Suite of software products, Concord offers the only solution to combine real time information with historical context for integrated fault and performance management across systems, applications and networks. Only by successfully managing fault, performance and availability across all of these key areas can organizations truly ensure effective e-business. This end-to-end view provides the critical insights needed to power day-to-day business and e-commerce operations for some of today's most successful service providers and corporations worldwide. Concord is headquartered in Marlboro, Mass. For more information on Concord, call 1-800-851-8725 or visit Concord on the Web at www.concord.com. Concord Communications, Inc., the Concord logo, eHealth Live Health, AdvantEDGE and SystemEDGE are trademarks of Concord Communications, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
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