Munich public utilities

Central IT monitoring for critical infrastructures

Stadtwerke München (SWM) is a central pillar of municipal services of general interest: with over 13,000 kilometers of electricity network, 12,000 km of fiber optic network, 6,000 km of natural gas network and 3,400 km of water network, they ensure the supply of millions of people in the region every day.

These services are based on a highly available, complex IT infrastructure with around 3,300 server systems, 1,000 databases and 7,500 client systems. Any failure - for example in the cash register system of a swimming pool or in traffic control systems - can have a direct impact on public life.

However, the monitoring technology previously used could no longer meet the increasing requirements: It was not sufficiently automated, could not be controlled centrally and did not offer a consistent view of the entire infrastructure.

A powerful, future-proof solution was therefore needed that:

- integratesall relevant source systems,

- consolidatesevent messages,

- enables 360° monitoring via modern dashboards and

- includes modern alarm management.

In addition, the existing rules and regulations of the old environment had to be seamlessly adopted without risking downtime during ongoing operations.

USU won the tender with the most technically and economically convincing overall offer - and thus laid the foundation for a new era of IT monitoring at Stadtwerke München.

Central 360° monitoring platform for all event sources

As part of a public tender, USU won the contract with the technically and economically best overall offer. The aim was to establish a central, scalable event management platform that transparently monitors the entire IT infrastructure of Stadtwerke München and automates processes.

The project began with a comprehensive analysis of the existing system landscape. Previous solutions such as SCOM, Centreon and Orchestrator were only integrated selectively - other tools such as Oracle Enterprise Manager, SAP SolMan or WhatsUp Gold were running in isolation.

With USU IT Monitoring, a central 360° monitoring platform has now been created that consolidates all event messages from Windows, Linux, network and SAP systems in one system. Superfluous processes were eliminated, new interfaces developed and the integration of additional sources - such as cloud applications (e.g. Azure) - implemented.

Another milestone was the integration of on-call duty planning directly into the system. What was previously organized manually via Excel is now an integrated part of the monitoring workflow - including automated alerting.

The result: consolidated event control, optimized escalation paths and a central overview of the entire critical IT infrastructure - around the clock.

Central 360° monitoring platform for all event sources

As part of a public tender, USU won the contract with the technically and economically best overall offer. The aim was to establish a central, scalable event management platform that transparently monitors the entire IT infrastructure of Stadtwerke München and automates processes.

The project began with a comprehensive analysis of the existing system landscape. Previous solutions such as SCOM, Centreon and Orchestrator were only integrated selectively - other tools such as Oracle Enterprise Manager, SAP SolMan or WhatsUp Gold were running in isolation.

With USU IT Monitoring, a central 360° monitoring platform has now been created that consolidates all event messages from Windows, Linux, network and SAP systems in one system. Superfluous processes were eliminated, new interfaces developed and the integration of additional sources - such as cloud applications (e.g. Azure) - implemented.

Another milestone was the integration of on-call duty planning directly into the system. What was previously organized manually via Excel is now an integrated part of the monitoring workflow - including automated alerting.

The result: consolidated event control, optimized escalation paths and a central overview of the entire critical IT infrastructure - around the clock.

With the introduction of USU IT Monitoring, Stadtwerke München has implemented a holistic, future-proof concept for monitoring its hybrid IT landscape. The solution enables a fully integrated 360° view of physical, virtual and cloud-based systems - in real time, automated and centrally controllable.

The newly established event management system now acts as a central instance for company-wide monitoring of all systems, platforms and applications. It consolidates the event messages from all relevant source systems and makes them transparent and controllable via modern dashboards. Not only have outdated tools been replaced, but isolated systems have also been integrated and interfaces expanded.

A particular added value lies in the comprehensive automation and process optimization. The system processes around 55,000 incidents a year - quickly, prioritized and fully documented. Unnecessary alerts are automatically suppressed, for example if the SCCM system installs updates during a scheduled patching process. After the update, the solution automatically checks whether all affected services are running as expected again - without any manual checks.

The new solution also ensures more efficient deployment planning: on-call duty planning, which was previously managed using Excel lists, is now fully integrated into the monitoring system. Faults are automatically detected and forwarded to the right teams via the alarm app - quickly, purposefully and traceably.

Key IT benefits at a glance:

• 360° monitoring across all physical, virtual and cloud systems
• 55 ,000 incidents per year are automatically processed and analyzed
• Intelligent alarm suppression for scheduled maintenance (e.g. SCCM)
• Automatic service check after updates - without manual intervention
• Central event platform bundles data from all source systems
• Seamless integration of existing tools and systems
• Integrated on-call duty planning for improved responsiveness
• Mobile alerting via app for fast and reliable escalations
• Dashboards and reports for maximum transparency and SLA monitoring
• Reduced operating and support costs with increased system availability
• Minimized risk of outages and compliance violations
  
  

In practice, this means that Stadtwerke München not only benefits from greater efficiency and improved response times, but also ensures the city's reliable supply - around the clock, digitally supported and managed for the future.