Perfectly networked: Wien Energie Telecommunications with CA Technologies for optimum customer service
The energy sector is increasingly under pressure. Due to the high level of competition on the market, utilities have to work even harder to offer their customers perfect services. Low end customer prices coupled with high investments, for example in the expansion of fiber optics, are further exacerbating the situation. By digitalizing and automating processes, resources can be used optimally and customers can be satisfied. Wien Energie’s telecommunications department is already successfully demonstrating how to optimize customer service – by creating transparency and performance in the network with CA Spectrum and CA Performance Manager.
Project overview
Field of application
Network management (fault and performance management) for a city network provider
Challenge
Replacement of an insufficiently scalable open source software, combined with a significant reduction in personnel expenses and integration in the automation of important process sequences
Implemented solution
CA Spectrum and CA Performance Manager
Wien Energie: lightning fast thanks to fiber optic network
Whether electricity, natural gas, heat or telecommunications – Wien Energie is the first port of call for energy supply in Vienna and all services. With around 2,650 employees, 2 million private customers and 230,000 industrial customers, Wien Energie is Austria’s largest energy services company. In addition to energy production and consulting, waste recycling and building maintenance, Wien Energie is also responsible for telecommunications. Wien Energie Telekommunikation (TK) is an internal service provider of Wiener Stadtwerke and as such is responsible for providing business and private customers with internet, telephony and TV. With currently around 70 employees, Wien Energie TK offers a range of services from network products to IP, SDH and PDH services as well as darkcyber connections and telephony services.
Digitalization and innovation are topics that are very important to Wien Energie, especially Wien Energie TK : Since 1983, fiber optic cables have been laid throughout the energy lines. The result: a fiber optic network with a total length of 2,222 kilometers, which Wien Energie TK operates and markets under the “blizznet” brand. Today, 3,400 private customers already rely on the high bandwidth and availability of the basic fiber optic network, which is guaranteed by a redundant network structure – another 1,300 services are active with commercial customers. Wien Energie TK’s broadband connections and telephony (VoIP) are also by 450 schools within the Vienna education network: with a total of 17,000 IT end devices, 2,500 WLAN access points and 750 active network nodes, Wien Energie manages the largest school network in Europe.
Away from open source – towards more interfaces
To ensure that customers of Wien Energie TK can use the services offered continuously and smoothly , they must be monitored permanently by the Network Operations Center (NOC). The fault and performance management system that Wien Energie TK been using to date was no longer able to the requirements: Although the open source software was cost-effective, it was not as scalable as commercial solutions. Support for the open source software was also no longer possible with the existing personnel resources and could no longer keep up with the quality of modern customer services. “We were looking for professional, commercially supported software that could handle today’s flood of data,” recalls Martin Smital, Network Management Systems at Wien Energie TK. “The topic of interfaces also played a major role for us. We quickly realized that the old fault management system could no longer provide us with enough interfaces.”
A broad spectrum of possibilities: CA Spectrum
CA Spectrum, the monitoring solution from the international software manufacturer CA Technologies, was to change this, offer more flexibility and ensure that customer needs are served in the best possible way. The solution immediately met Wien Energie’s requirements: “From our point of view, CA Spectrum was the product on the market that offered the broadest range of technical services,” explains Martin Smital. The scaling option and the auto-discovery function were particularly convincing: CA Spectrum cyclically searches for new components in the network and can simultaneously save their configuration. Paul Wallner, technical product developer at Wien Energie TK, was also impressed by the large number of possible interfaces: “We were already impressed by the fact that there are no limits here.”
A partner amasol has been responsible for the implementation, maintenance and further development of the CA solution since mid-2015. After the contract was awarded, initial workshops were with amasol coordinate expectations on both sides and discuss the rollout. Around three employees each were in the project at Wien Energie and amasol. As part of the jointly concluded maintenance and support contract, amasol provides continuous remote support. amasol is also responsible for the further development of the solutions. “amasol GmbH has extensive expertise in the specific solutions from CA Technologies. Having the backing of our partner is extremely important for us to our goal together,” says Martin Smital.
Successful duo CA Spectrum and CA Performance Manager
Today, the CA Spectrum fault management solution is not only used at Wien Energie TK during the installation process to continuously monitor the network components and newly installed customer services. It also plays a key role in the fault clearance process, in which the Network Operations Center (NOC) is continuously integrated: if customers contact NOC employees in the event of problems with their own services, they can use CA Spectrum to immediately understand the cause of the fault and how it can be rectified. On the one hand, employees can monitor the IP-based network components around the clock by actively querying them cyclically. On the other hand, CA Spectrum can receive SNMP traps from the components, convert them into events and correlate them into alarms. Wien Energie TK are therefore always alerted directly via the software in the event of anomalies.
In parallel to CA Spectrum, Wien Energie TK has been using CA Performance Manager since 2016 in order to be able to cyclically query performance data from IP-based network components. Metrics such as the utilization or accessibility of components can be analyzed and made available to internal and external customers via the web interface of CA Performance Manager – this creates transparency and trust in the network on the customers side.
Together with its partner amasol, Wien Energie TK has developed an interface via which the internal asset management system, in which all network components are entered, can be connected to CA Spectrum and CA Performance Manager. The data transfer between the central asset management system, which also functions as a ticket and work order system at Wien Energie TK, and the two CA solutions thus works automatically. “Users no longer have to transfer customer data manually – this is now done automatically via the interface. This allows us to achieve greater speed and quality in our processes,” says Martin Smital. This also has advantages for customers: End customers can quickly and easily regenerate passwords if they are forgotten, giving them continuous access to the performance management system.
An overview of the entire network – in real time and with foresight
By connecting the central asset management system to CA Spectrum and CA Performance Manager, Wien Energie TK is able to ensure data consistency and thus reduce the error rate. “Colleagues no longer have to enter data into several systems, but only once at a central location – the data is then transferred via the developed interface,” says Paul Wallner, technical product developer at Wien Energie TK.
The CA Performance Manager not only gives Wien Energie TK a real-time view of the performance of individual components. The solution also offers the opportunity to plan ahead and make the network infrastructure fit for the future.
How is certain performance data developing? How heavily are individual interfaces utilized? CA Performance Manager provides answers to these questions and at the same time data that Wien Energie TK can use for planning. “If we know, for example, that we have a load of 60 percent on a 10 gigabyte interface, which risen cyclically in recent months, we can say with certainty that we need to take action in the next three to four months – and upgrade this line,” says Martin Smital.
On the way to a digital future
CA Spectrum not only supports the employees of Wien Energie TK in monitoring customer services. Wien Energie’s central IT service provider, which operates numerous servers within its data center, is already benefiting from the solution. Here too, an interface has been created between the IT service provider’s fault management and CA Spectrum. If a network component or an interface of a network component fails there, CA Spectrum forwards status messages by e-mail or script to the central IT service provider’s system. “CA Spectrum forms a kind of hub for us today and also enables the connection of systems outside the Group,” explains Martin Smital.
The topics of digitalization and automation will continue to accompany Wien Energie TK when it comes to increasing customer loyalty. The next step on the agenda is the digitalization of the installation process, one of the core processes at Wien Energie TK. The aim is to take more and more of the burden off employees automating workloads. Interfaces are intended to ensure automated processes across the board. “We will continue to see new challenges in the future, especially in network monitoring, which we would like to overcome with further solutions from CA Technologies and in cooperation with our partner amasol,” summarizes Martin Smital.
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