G-Cloud 11 services are suspended on Digital Marketplace

If you have an ongoing procurement on G-Cloud 11, you must complete it by 18 December 2020. Existing contracts with Net Consulting are still valid.
Net Consulting

End-User Experience Monitoring (Aternity) - UKCloud Hosted (Elevated OFFICIAL)

End-User Experience Monitoring (Riverbed Aternity) in Elevated OFFICIAL domain provides visibility of all your applications, whether they run on a physical, virtual or mobile device. Net Consulting’s End User Experience Monitoring Service allows you to rapidly diagnose and resolve your end-user issues and boost productivity within your ever technology-reliant workforce.

Features

  • End-user experience monitoring taken from end-user perspective
  • Measurement of user click-to-response business transaction performance
  • Measurement of end-user device resource consumption and stability
  • Auditing of installed software and usage time
  • Before and After change comparison
  • Customisable dashboarding and reporting
  • Application SLA monitoring
  • Secure UKCloud hosted platform operating up to Elevated OFFICIAL
  • UKCloud platform, UK based, operated by SC/NPPV cleared personnel
  • Service options: Self-Service and Managed Service available

Benefits

  • IT change validation relating to application performance and stability
  • Prove success of Windows upgrade, Office 365 and datacentre migration
  • Evidence to support optimal hardware upgrade business cases
  • Prioritise application troubleshooting based on end-user perspective measurements
  • Software compliance and end-user device build validation
  • Reduce maintenance costs by identifying unused or over-licensed software
  • Identify non-compliant software usage (shadow IT)
  • End-user asset and software auditing to support ISO/GDPR
  • Facilitate ongoing Business Analysis to support IT investment decisions
  • Proactively manage distributed end-device performance with fewer IT support staff

Pricing

£4.25 to £4.25 a licence

  • Education pricing available
  • Free trial available

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at commercial@netconsulting.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 11

Service ID

7 1 1 1 7 0 6 7 9 3 1 3 0 5 4

Contact

Net Consulting Jonathan Ryan
Telephone: 02920 972020
Email: commercial@netconsulting.co.uk

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
  • Public cloud
  • Private cloud
  • Community cloud
Service constraints
Monthly patching of system which will require brief outages out of normal office hours. However, end-user data is collected on a store-and-forward basis so will not be lost.
System requirements
  • A light-weight agent to be installed on each end-user/VDI desktop
  • Modern web browser to interrogate solution GUI

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Within 4 hours during business working hours (09:00 - 17:30 Monday to Friday)
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
No
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
No
Support levels
Net Consulting operates a triage process, which helps decide the order in which incidents are escalated. On preliminary assessment, we apply measures according to the impact of the incident to you. This allows us to categorise incidents from Priority 1 to Priority 4.

Example Support Levels:

PRIORITY 1 - CRITICAL

Priority 1 incidents are likely to critically impact your ability to conduct business. We’ll respond to a Priority 1 incident within 1 hour.

PRIORITY 2 - HIGH IMPACT DISRUPTION

Priority 2 incidents are high-impact problems that interrupt your organisation, but there’s still capacity to continue to be productive. We’ll respond to a Priority 2 incident within 4 hours.

PRIORITY 3 - MINOR IMPACT DISRUPTION

Priority 3 incidents are medium-to-low impact problems that comprise of limited loss of non-critical business functionality. We’ll respond to a Priority 3 incident within 8 hours.

PRIORITY 4 – INFORMATIONAL REQUEST

Priority 4 issues include requests that do not fall within the Priority 1 – Priority 3 classifications. We’ll respond to a Priority 4 incidents within 24 hours.
Support available to third parties
No

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
The onboarding process will differ according to the project and business need, however a Project Manager will be assigned to each new customer. They will ensure that an initial kick-off meeting is arranged and a Statement of Work detailing our approach, any customer requirements, on and off boarding procedures.

The key steps are:
1. Determine the number of end-user agents required
2. Create customer portal
3. Create role based access accounts
4. Provide customer-specific agents for installation
5. Optionally use professional services to create business transaction monitoring for critical applications
6. Optionally use professional services to create customer dashboard and/or reports
7. facilitate training or agree managed service requirements
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
If requested, historic reports covering the span of stored data can be provided prior to the secure decommissioning of the relevant databases.
End-of-contract process
Net Consulting will export requested reports covering the stored data. Access to the portal will be disabled and on final agreement, the database will be purged of all customer data.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
Application to install
Yes
Compatible operating systems
  • MacOS
  • Windows
Designed for use on mobile devices
No
Service interface
No
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
The solution has a RESTful API which returns data in a standard XML/JSON format. A wide range of data is available including application activity, resource usage, application events, custom business transaction timings, installed software and software changes
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
API sandbox or test environment
No
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
The following can be customised:
Dashboards
Reports
Monitored business transactions (click-to-screen application responses)
Alerting thresholds

All customisation is performed via the web interface

Full role based access is in place. Service users with sufficient rights can customise settings, or Net Consulting as the Managed Service provider can manage this at the customer's request.

Scaling

Independence of resources
In order to guarantee that users are not affected by the demands from other users, we use resource reservations and shares such as internet bandwidth shaping. In addition, the capacity planning team ensure that usage in terms of all resources are constantly monitored and increased accordingly relating to user demand.

There are clearly defined guidelines in terms of resource requirements for the solution, and the on-boarding process will determine whether additional resources are required for the customer.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
User access is logged and withing the customer data, all application usage is recorded.
Reporting types
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Reseller providing extra features and support
Organisation whose services are being resold
Riverbed, UKCloud

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Conforms to BS7858:2012
Government security clearance
Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
United Kingdom
User control over data storage and processing locations
No
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
Penetration testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Penetration testing approach
‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
Protecting data at rest
Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
Equipment disposal approach
Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Reports can be exported in HTML, PDF and CSV format direct from the web interface
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data export formats
  • PDF
  • HTML
Data import formats
Other
Other data import formats
Data collected direct from end-user agent software

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Data protection within supplier network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • Other
Other protection within supplier network
The UKCloud hosted platform uses dedicated CAS-T circuits between each site to ensure the protection of customer data in-flight .The data is encrypted within the Elevated OFFICIAL platform. All data flows are also subject to an internal protective monitoring service.

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
99.95% guaranteed availability
Approach to resilience
Objects are automatically replicated across nodes to protect against hardware failure. Services are deployed across a number of sites, regions and zones. Each zone is designed to eliminate single points of failure (such as power, network and hardware).
Outage reporting
For the fundamental infrastructure all outages will be reported via the Service Status page and the notifications service within the UKCloud Portal.  Outages are identified as Planned maintenance, Emergency maintenance, and platform issues.  In addition, the designated Technical Account Manager will proactively contact customers as appropriate.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
  • Username or password
  • Other
Other user authentication
Initial validation of user accounts is via 2-factor authentication.
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
All user accounts are subject to full role based access control. Only authorised users will be permitted management level access.
Access restriction testing frequency
At least once a year
Management access authentication
  • Username or password
  • Other
Description of management access authentication
Initial validation of user accounts is via 2-factor authentication.

All user accounts are subject to full role based access control. Only authorised users will be permitted management level access.

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
Between 1 month and 6 months
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
Between 1 month and 6 months
How long system logs are stored for
Between 1 month and 6 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
SOCOTEC
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
26/09/2017
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
There are four areas that are not applicable to Net Consulting's ISO27001 certification, justification has been provided for these exemptions: 9-4-5 Access control to program source code, 11.1.6 Delivery and loading areas, 14.1.2 Securing application services on public networks and 14.2.7 Outsourced development.

UKCloud is also certified
Lloyds Register (LR)
8th May 2012
There are no exemptions to UKCloud certification
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
Yes
CSA STAR accreditation date
28/10/2016
CSA STAR certification level
Level 1: CSA STAR Self-Assessment
What the CSA STAR doesn’t cover
The Level 1: CSA STAR Self-Assessment certification relates to that of UKCloud. There are no exemptions to this certification
PCI certification
No
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
  • Cyber Essentials Plus (Net Consulting & UKCloud)
  • ISO27018 (UKCloud)
  • ISO2000 (UKCloud)
  • CISPE Code of Conduct Certification (UKCloud)

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
  • CSA CCM version 3.0
  • ISO/IEC 27001
  • Other
Other security governance standards
CSA STAR, ISO27001, ISO27017, ISO27018 and ISO20000
Information security policies and processes
Net Consulting is ISO9001 and ISO27001 certified. The UKCloud Platform has a number of inter-connected governance frameworks in place which control both how the Company operates and the manner in which it delivers cloud services to its customers. These have been independently assessed and certified against ISO20000, ISO27001, ISO27017 and ISO27018 by LRQA, a UKAS accredited audit body. The Company is governed by an integrated suite of information security policies. Under the top level Information Security Policy itself are second-level documents with specific focus on Acceptable Use, Antivirus Protection, Asset Management, Business Continuity Management, Data Protection, Password Management, Personnel Management, Supply Chain Management and many others.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Configuration and change management approach
Net Consulting follow the same platform patching regime as the software vendor's internet facing SsaS instance. Changes are managed via the internal Service Operations Centre in accordance with defined ISO9001 policies.
UKCloud has documented configuration and change management policies and processes, which have been implemented, maintained and assessed in accordance with the guidance from ITIL v.3 and the current ISO20000 standard. Formal configuration management activities, including record management and asset reporting.
Vulnerability management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Vulnerability management approach
In addition to the Penetration Test, Net Consulting run vulnerability scans for the solution on a bi-monthly basis. The VA threat source comes directly from the Nessus database and is supplemented by NIST feeds. Critical vulnerabilities will be subject to an emergency Change Advisory Board and patches will be implemented outside of the normal monthly cycle.

UKCloud has a documented vulnerability management policy and process, which have been implemented, maintained and assessed in accordance with the guidance from ITIL v.3 and the current ISO20000 and ISO27001 standards.
Protective monitoring type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Protective monitoring approach
Following best practice from the National Cyber Security Centre, UKCloud protects both its Assured and Elevated platforms with 24x7 enhanced protective monitoring services, vulnerability scanning and assessment.  The approach to protective monitoring at minimum meets the Protective Monitoring Controls (PMC 1-12) outlined in NCSC document GPG13 (Protective Monitoring for HMG ICT Systems).  It includes checks against systems events (SIEM) and network traffic analysis, including time sources, cross-boundary traffic, suspicious activities at a boundary, network connections and status of backups. Any alerts generated are logged and investigated 24x7.
Incident management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Incident management approach
Net Consulting and UKCloud have documented Incident Management policies and processes. These have been implemented, maintained and assessed in accordance with the guidance from ITIL v.3 (Net Consulting and UKCloud) and the current ISO20000 and ISO27001 standards (UKCloud). This facilitates the progression of alerts generated by automated monitoring systems, issues identified by Net Consulting or UKCloud personnel, and Incidents identified and reported to Net Consulting or UKCloud by its customers and partners. Incidents are promptly reported into respective central ticketing systems, ensuring each Incident is quickly assigned to an appropriate resource, and its progress tracked and escalated to resolution.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
Yes
Connected networks
  • Public Services Network (PSN)
  • NHS Network (N3)
  • Joint Academic Network (JANET)
  • Health and Social Care Network (HSCN)

Pricing

Price
£4.25 to £4.25 a licence
Discount for educational organisations
Yes
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
Proof of Concept

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at commercial@netconsulting.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.