May 1, 2013

HMSHost Debuts Network Operation Center at Corporate Headquarters

New system will ensure highest level of security and system reliability at all HMSHost restaurant locations

Bethesda, MD — Global restaurateur HMSHost announced today the launch of its new Network Operation Center (NOC), located at its corporate office in Bethesda, MD. The NOC will provide the monitoring capability for all data that is collected during each transaction, ensuring the highest level of security available for HMSHost’s airport and motorway clients and customers.

“The launch of the NOC has significantly improved our technology reliability and performance by shifting the paradigm towards proactive monitoring of all technology assets – customer-facing and those used by our operations,” said Sarah Naqvi, Vice President of Systems at HMSHost. “Such a shift will significantly improve the customer’s experience, enhance the technology experience for our operations, and allow HMSHost to lay a strong and scalable technology foundation for future growth.”

Over the past few years, HMSHost’s technology footprint has expanded to include many customer-facing solutions. The expansion of a Wi-Fi offering by HMSHost in many of its locations has raised the expectations of reliable technology offerings. In response to these demands, and in order to optimize the technology experience for its customers, HMSHost worked diligently to create the NOC.

“I have seen a number of network operations centers across the seven-state territory I manage and HMSHost’s ranks at the top,” said Tim Barrett, Territory Sales Manager for WatchGuard Technologies, a provider of internet security solutions and network security appliances and HMSHost technology partner. “It’s obvious just at a glance that a tremendous amount of thought, hard work and dedication went into making it the kind of facility that advances the standard. WatchGuard is proud to be a part of it.”

The new NOC houses a team of network engineers and support personnel who specialize in the unique platform configurations of all systems used within the operations. This facility provides support for all of the company’s managed and hosted technologies, resulting in proactive monitoring of all systems which enables quick resolution of issues and significantly reduces system downtime.

“Our IT team is positioned to provide the highest levels of service, support and regulatory oversight. The new facility will arm our security team with gigabytes of correlated data, analyzed in seconds, and accessible from a centralized repository,” said Tom Fricke, President and CEO of HMSHost. “With these improved analysis tools, we will be able to identify suspicious activities across devices at any point in our Infrastructure and
ensure that all of our data, both customer data and internal data, remains safe.”

Tools deployed for NOC:

Microsoft, System Center Operations Manager 2012 – Monitoring of the multiple Microsoft server operating systems within the organization

IBM, Qradar – Central event log collection and real time event correlation from all Network switches, Routers, Firewalls, Access points, IDS, VPN, IronPort Web Proxies and Enterasys NAC as well as RADIUS, Domain Controller, DHCP, IIS, Oracle and SQL

Quest Software, Spotlight on SQL – Real Time monitoring of backend SQL Database systems

Quest Software, Spotlight on Messaging – Real Time Monitoring of Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry Enterprise Server environments

Manage Engine, Application Monitor – Web Application monitoring system to ensure Service Availability and Application Performance

SolarWinds, Virtualization Manager – Performance and Health monitoring for all VMWare ESX virtualized server infrastructure

IpSwitch, What’s Up Gold – Network Monitoring of more than 3,500 Network devices for both availability as well as performance