Gaming APAC

SEGA Reduced Incident Reaction Time with Streamlined Root-Cause Analysis

SEGA is one of the leading interactive entertainment companies with multiple offices around the world. SEGA is known for their multi-million selling game franchises including Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star or Total War series. SEGA is still growing also via acquisitions and keeps setting new standards in gaming and interactive entertainment.

Challenges

Network consolidation accross 11 group offices and 20 buildings
To replace resource demanding packet capture solution with NetFlow based solution
Need for an analytical capabilities to analyse root causes when network troubles occur
Reduction of data volumes regarded to packet capture

Key Benefits

Network traffic visibility and enhanced security
Routine task automation
Detailed knowledge of data network utilization and therefore better capacity planning
Root causes analysis regarded to network issues
A tool providing functions to react quickly when problem occurs

Deployed products

Flowmon ADS
Flowmon Collector
Flowmon Probe

Situation

For SEGA it is critical to design and maintain large network infrastructure between company offices. Visibility across the whole network is a must when ensuring stability of systems, services and troubleshooting. SEGA used to analyze network by packet capture solution. This approach was very demanding when consuming large volumes of storage and time for analysis. Therefore, a request for NetFlow based solution deployment arose.

Solution

SEGA’s network is used by 2600 employees on a daily basis. Tens gigabytes of game data are transferred over the network between development team and testing team every day. The company´s requirements on network visibility have been resolved by Flowmon solution. Flowmon fulfil company’s demands on detailed reporting, analytical capabilities, fast troubleshooting, capacity planning and possibility to provide packet capture functions when needed.

Full Case Study

The company has implemented Flowmon solution consisting of 24TB Flowmon Collector for collecting, storing and analysing flow data statistics from several Flowmon Probes and Cisco active devices. The functionality of the collector is extended with Flowmon Anomaly Detection System for network behavior analysis. Thanks to that, SEGA is now provided with detailed network visibility which helps the company to detect and response to any kind of network operational or security issue in real-time.

“The installation of Flowmon is very simple and intuitive. Thanks to Flowmon, we are provided with network visibility that we previously lacked. As a consequence we can identify the causes of network issues easier than ever before. The solution also allows us to design the proper capacity of our network. We plan to enforce network monitoring solution deployment across all 11 group offices and 20 facilities.”

Masahiro Sato
Operations Network Engineer at SEGA