Founded in 1961, Plantronics, Inc., (NYSE: PLT) introduced the first lightweight communications headset in 1962 and is today the world’s leading designer, manufacturer, and marketer of lightweight communications headset products. Plantronics headsets are widely used in many Fortune 500 corporations and have been featured in numerous films and high profile events, including the historic “One small step for man” transmission from the moon in 1969. The company offers mobile headsets to address the cordless and mobile phone market, next-generation computer audio headset products for computer applications, and corded and cordless headsets and systems for the office, small office/home office, and contact centers. Plantronics is headquartered in Santa Cruz, CA with offices in 20 countries and has more than 6,600 employees worldwide.

The leading designer, manufacturer, and marketer of lightweight headsets, Plantronics needed to comply with the SOX and PCI mandates, without overwhelming its limited IT resources. Though the company had been collecting logs from its web servers and generating the applicable reports, these tasks were taking hours to accomplish – simply too great a burden on the small staff. Additionally, the company was concerned that its ad hoc system did not meet strict PCI regulations that could hurt them in an upcoming audit.

Unclear on the best direction to take, Plantronics approached its auditors for recommendations on best practices. Though the company considered developing a log management system in-house, the high volume of logs and the frequency with which files were being pulled made this infeasible. SaaS and software solutions had also received early consideration, but the pressure to achieve and maintain PCI compliance, and at the recommendations of auditors, Plantronics set out to find an appliance-based solution that would meet its needs.   “We needed a solution that would collect all of the necessary logs in one place,” explains Daniel Barone, system administrator at Plantronics. “We were looking for a solution that would ensure compliance while also helping us to reduce the time it took to generate reports.”

Because the TIBCO LogLogic® solution came highly recommended by auditors and could pull a variety of logs from the servers and gather logs in diverse formats easily and quickly, Plantronics chose the TIBCO LogLogic® MX appliance as its new logging solution. The single LogLogic appliance is now supporting the most critical systems at Plantronics – its web servers- collecting logs from twenty boxes, primarily PCI and SOX related servers. Implementation of the LogLogic solution went smoothly, taking just an hour.

“The ease and speed of the installation and implementation process was a nice surprise,” notes Barone. “The most time-consuming task was pointing each of our servers to the LogLogic appliance. Once that was done, we were off and running.”

Barone was also surprised that he didn’t need the kind of training and support he had become accustomed to on other technology implementation projects, finding that with just the product documentation and some key insights from his TIBCO LogLogic sales engineer he was able to get the product running.                                                                                                                               

The LogLogic solution is already proving itself highly effective in speeding up report generation and delivery. Reporting processes that once took Barone two hours or more to complete are accomplished in just 15 minutes. Barone also appreciates the precision and clarity of the reports.

“It’s not just information gathered by me and put into a spreadsheet,” says Barone. “LogLogic allows me to collect information in the format I actually need.”

Barone also finds the day-to-day maintenance of the system simple, with little to manage beyond monitoring available disk space on the LogLogic appliance. Plantronics has also leveraged the LogLogic solution beyond compliance reporting.

“We now have a better idea of how people throughout the organization are using our servers and how the servers are affected,” says Barone.

As an example, Barone can now monitor processes being initiated on the Oracle databases – when each process is initiated, how it affects the CPU, the data usage, and when the process is terminated – giving him information he can use to meet the company’s hardware and software needs over time. In addition to SOX and PCI reporting, Barone runs weekly SUDO reports (on the activity of super users) and other reports on processes running on the servers. All of these reports give Barone visibility into the health of his systems that was previously unavailable to him.

The LogLogic solution has been so successful that the company is considering expanding the project and collecting logs from additional servers, something they never would have considered with their previous logging solution. The company plans to use the information provided by these logs to check general system health and gather information that will help them in planning for their future needs. Because the LogLogic system has been so simple to maintain, Plantronics feels that it can expand the use of the appliance without burdening the IT staff.