Generali optimizes Application Performance Management with the introduction of its own Center of Excellence
With premium income of around 16.2 billion euros and more than 13.5 million customers, Generali Deutschland AG is the second-largest primary insurance group on the German market and part of the international Generali Group, a major player in the global insurance industry. In almost 200 years, Generali has built up a multinational group that is represented in over 60 countries and offers a wide range of products and services. With 74,000 employees in more than 420 companies.
In order to optimize Application Performance Management (APM) for the portal applications used in the insurance company, Generali Deutschland Informatik Services GmbH (GDIS) decided to introduce a Center of Excellence (CoE), which not only takes care of the implementation and operation of a corresponding APM tool, but also provides support for the implementation and operation of the portal applications.
This is responsible for the entire APM lifecycle across the entire company. GDIS worked closely amasol GmbH, a managed services provider from Munich, on the design and implementation of the CoE project.
Project overview
Company
Generali Deutschland AG
Field of application
Responsibility for and optimization of Application Performance Management (APM)
Challenge
Consolidation of the different solutions and responsibilities for performance management
Implemented solution
A "Center of Excellence" (CoE) was established to introduce and implement the new APM solution. The CoE's task is to manage all APM activities within the company and coordinate them.
Goal: continuous overview of performance from the mouse click in the browser to the mainframe
In 2016, GDIS decided to streamline the monitoring tool landscape and introduce a central APM tool with the aim of ensuring greater consistency in the performance monitoring of the portal applications operated within the company. This was preceded by a comprehensive evaluation process as part of a proof of concept (PoC). Günther Wynands, Head of the KV-i specialist group at Generali, was one of the people involved in the selection processDeutschland Informatik Services GmbH.
With a team more than 20 employees, Mr. Wynands is responsible for the middleware used in the company based on IBM and open source solutions. On the other hand, he is responsible for operating the Internet portals for field staff and freelance insurance brokers at Generali Deutschland, which are available to them 24/7 . He explains: “Our company has a very complex IT environment, from the web interface in the front end to mainframe systems in the back end. In line with these different systems and components, there were also different solutions for performance monitoring in the past, which prevented a consistent overview of overall performance.” If performance problems arose, the various monitoring managers often started “finger pointing” according to the motto: “Everything is green with me!” The PoC mentioned at the beginning was intended to solve this problem once and for all.
The selection process was ultimately won by Dynatrace with its APM solution. Dynatrace enables comprehensive and detailed application monitoring and management of the performance of applications over their entire application lifecycle. “The main decision criterion for using Dynatrace’s APM solution was the realization that the solution best guarantees the end-to-end overview we require,” explains Günther Wynands. “This not only applies to the operation of an application, but also begins during development, where APM-relevant specifications can be taken into account. Dynatrace therefore supports the DevOps approach in the company.” In order to optimize the overview of performance monitoring not only technically but also organizationally, the solution is not only used at Generali Deutschland Informatik Services (GDIS), but also at its “sister” Generali Shared Services (GSS), the international shared services provider for the Generali Group’s IT infrastructure. “This means that both those responsible for the IT infrastructure and those responsible for the applications operated on it work with the same solution and can therefore fall back on ‘one version of the truth’,” says Günther Wynands, explaining this approach. Both companies have been working with the Dynatrace solution since fall 2016. As a certified Dynatrace partner, amasol GmbH provided support during the implementation of the APM suite.
APM Center of Excellence: “Owner” for the area of Application Performance Management at GDIS
As part of the implementation of the Dynatrace APM solution at GDIS, amasol also provided the impetus for the introduction of an APM Center of Excellence. In a joint workshop in June 2016, the content and framework conditions for the introduction of a CoE were developed with the management of the two Generali IT service areas, specialists for the development and operation of applications and consultants from amasol Gmbh. Günther Wynands recalls: “The basic idea for such a Center of Excellence already existed internally, especially as our colleagues at Generali in France were working on a similar initiative. However, the concrete idea actually came from amasol.”
The aim of the CoE is to anchor APM as a “topic” in the company. Specialist group leader Wynands explains: “Anyone who believes that it is enough to simply install software in the company to successfully cover the topic of APM is mistaken. Just as important, perhaps even more important, is an accompanying implementation with the aim of ‘taking along’ the employees.” According to Wynands, this is the only way to ensure that employees recognize the benefits of the solution, and the only way to ensure that the solution is used company-wide. This applies to both day-to-day operations and supplementary projects.
In a second step, the amasol proposal was then adapted by GDIS and GSS. The company continued to rely on external input from amasol consultants, particularly in the areas of analysis and training. The CoE was then officially launched on April 1, 2017.
A Center of Excellence pays off
Even before the official launch of the CoE, the idea met with great approval within the company. Everyone involved was highly motivated to implement the idea right from the start. Günther Wynands confirms: “It was never really a question of ‘whether’ a CoE would be introduced, but always just a question of ‘how’.” However, the question of the cost-benefit ratio was of course raised, particularly by the specialist managers. After all, such a project seemed to be associated with additional effort and therefore additional costs.
However, Mr. Wynands and his colleagues were able to dispel concerns in this area relatively quickly: “The employees work on application performance management even without a CoE, which also causes effort and costs. A CoE, on the other hand, provides organization and structure as well as a holistic view of the topic and thus increases the efficiency of all employees, which of course has a positive effect on effort and costs,” Mr. Wynands explains his reasoning.
The APM CoE “Core Team” currently consists of four application monitoring specialists who currently spend around 80 percent of their working time on the CoE. They were recruited from both Generali IT Services divisions. The team developed the basic concept of APM end-to-end monitoring, the phases and stages of introducing this concept, monitoring its implementation and providing help and guidance to APM users in the individual departments.
Additional, temporary members (add-ons) are included in the CoE for specific topics. These work in a virtual team with the core team and spend around 20 percent of their working time on the CoE. In this process, amasol GmbH provided support in the form of training, coaching and project-related support. For example, the service provider supported Generali in defining KPIs to ensure the comparability of load tests when launching an application.
In addition, the Center of Excellence has already initiated its own initial projects. For example, a company-wide tool map has been created, in which all monitoring tools used at GDIS and GSS been included with a corresponding plug-in. Günther Wynands explains: “Our main aim is to include not only the ‘mainstream’ tools that are used across the board, such as the Dynatrace APM solution, but also those that might used in the future. Generali Germany currently uses tools from Dynatrace and Splunk as well as BMC MainView and nGeniusONE from NetScout.”
Another project of the APM CoE at Generali is so-called “deep dives”, in which the various tools are compared with the aim of integrating APM into the corporate processes at GDIS. And ultimately, one of the CoE’s tasks is create a community for APM at Generali . “As a first step, we initially once asked the question: Who at Generali in Germany is actually involved with APM at the moment? Then we got in touch with these colleagues,” explains Günther Wynands.
The aim is to exchange information and experience as directly as possible. In the medium term, the APM community at Generali is also to be expanded internationally.
APM Center of Excellence at Generali: A successful start
Günther Wynands draws a positive conclusion about the CoE’s work to date: “Thanks to CoE, there is now a company-wide owner for APM who has succeeded in defining and implementing standardized processes across the entire life cycle of an application. This has made it possible to achieve a consistent end-to-end view of performance from the browser to the mainframe.” All areas such as development, testing, operations and the specialist department (application owner) use the same APM approach. This has made communication between the departments much easier, as everyone has the same data and the same overview.
The head of the KV-i specialist group at Generali Deutschland Informatik Services GmbH attests to amasol’s experts’ high level of problem-solving expertise. He adds: “The colleagues at amasol also have a high degree of flexibility in terms of time and content. Thanks to this flexibility, we were always able to expand our own capacities as required. In addition, the ability of amasol employees to quickly familiarize themselves with a project and then familiarize themselves with it made it easier to work together in daily practice. The input of external experts is just as important for us in the further development of the CoE as the project-related support.”
Finally, Günther Wynands gives all IT managers in other companies who are also faced with the challenge of optimizing application performance management a final tip based on his own experience: “Today, APM must understood as a company-wide discipline and no longer just solution-oriented. The introduction of a Center of Excellence can be an important and useful step here.”
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