Global Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

INDUSTRY:
Connected Healthcare
LANTRONIX DELIVERS OUT-OF-BAND MANAGEMENT OF
REMOTE DEVICES FOR PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING

Success Highlights

  • Enables continuous out-of-band access to and control of devices
  • Drastically reduces the impact of costly network outages and unexpected repair downtime
  • Reduces support response time from 3 hours to 3 minutes
  • Ensures quality control and compliance of initial device configurations
  • Reduces interruption of network-dependent production processes

Case Study Overview

One of the world’s largest global pharmaceutical manufacturers deployed Lantronix’s out-of-band solutions for remote management, incident triage and fast response to network infrastructure issues. This results in fewer issues, reduction in costly network outages and an increase in up-time.

CHALLENGE: Lack of Access and Expensive Downtime

Prior to installing the Lantronix’s out-of-band solutions, the company’s challenges included:

  • Lack of access. It was difficult if not impossible to provide immediate response to network issues since there was no way to provide remote support.
  • Expensive downtime. It was costly to have downtime as the manufacturing floor has both the real-time costs of delayed production as well as the potential cost of lost work-in-progress in the development of pharmaceutical products.
  • Absence of secure access. It was not possible to gain secure access to the gear behind the manufacturing firewall.
  • Missing configuration records. There were no details on initial configurations when the gear was deployed or replaced, nor were there any records of configuration changes.
  • Previous lack of maintenance. Routine updates and maintenance of device configurations were not done, leaving systems vulnerable to failure.

“The Lantronix out-of-band solution helps this leading pharmaceutical manufacturer avoid costly network outages and interruptions caused by downtime while gaining the benefits of increased network uptime.” – Jacques Issa, VP of Marketing, Lantronix Inc


SOLUTION: Lantronix’s Out-of-Band Solution Provides Remote Management of Devices

The company chose Lantronix’s advanced out-of-band solutions, including its LM83X with 8-port serial card, LCD card, LTE modem and the Lantronix Control Center. Lantronix’s hardware-agnostic out-of-band management platform supports devices from multiple vendors, ensuring continuity across the network.

Lantronix’s out-of-band solution provides:

  • Secure management access to network infrastructure behind the manufacturing floor firewall
  • Continuous direct monitoring of network infrastructure to triage issues andautomate device recovery using standard runbook responses
  • Automatic device configuration management when a network admin logs into a device
  • Zero-Touch Provisioning of devices on initial deployment or replacement
  • Custom automation of network device monitoring and data-driven management, enabled through the Lantronix rules engine

“The manufacturer’s ROI depends on the advanced out-of-band solutions from Lantronix that help avoid costly network outages, interruptions caused by downtime and slow access to support, which can quickly cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.” – Jacques Issa, VP of Marketing, Lantronix Inc.


Product:

Lantronix LM83X with 8-port serial card

Lantronix’s Local Manager, the LM83X, is a modular platform designed to act independently from the network to remotely monitor, manage and control from 8 to 104 devices, including a managed power supply.

The LM83X is a scalable and robust LM with dual power inputs for enterprises and data centers. Connectivity options include dual Ethernet management, an SFP port, modular out-of-band modem options and three expansion bays for serial and dedicated Ethernet connections.

Lantronix Control Center

The Lantronix Control Center is deployed on a pre-configured, dual CPU, rack-mountable server and includes an embedded Oracle database engine. It is also available as a VM to run on a customerprovider server.

The Lantronix Control Center enables out-of-band management by providing a centralized point of control for all Lantronix LM Series console servers. Then, through the console servers, users have direct access and automated management of all connected devices deployed throughout the distributed IT environment. With its web-based graphical user interface (GUI), the Control Center puts IT administrators in control of real-time data to easily manage, configure, and control all connected network devices and servers.


RESULTS: Reduced Costly Network Outages and Downtime, Improved Remote Management

With Lantronix out-of-band management, for networking gear isolated behind the manufacturing floor network firewall, the IT team can now:

  • Securely and remotely gain access
  • Monitor service levels to ensure uptime
  • Detect, record and roll-back configuration changes
  • Automate recovery of failed devices
  • Create custom event-based automation to detect issues and maintain service levels
  • Address issues automatically in Network Layers 0-3.5

About Lantronix

Lantronix Inc. is a global provider
of secure turnkey solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Remote Environment Management (REM), offering Software as a Service (SaaS), connectivity services, engineering services and intelligent hardware.