Government, Healthcare

Business challenge Regional Council had numerous IT systems and various monitoring technologies, but no centralized visibility or ability to respond to alarms and alerts in a coordinated, systematic manner.

Transformation Blekinge Regional Council gained a holistic view of and ability to centrally monitor its myriad IT systems when IBM Business Partners Atea and Compose IT Jens Svendsen Nordic AB used an agile approach to implement the System Compose Operation Platform, which includes the Administrator for IBM® Watson AIOps Event Manager application and Region Blekinge Compose Collection modules for dynamic event management and alert routing.

Results “Watson AIOps is really Blekinge Regional good at collecting Provides a holistic view information from many of multiple, separate IT systems for Council different sources and monitoring and alarm management centralizing the information to one point.” Increases proactivity Monitor and manage IT —Markus Carlsson, Head of and reduces incident response times Professional Services, IBM systems across the enterprise Business Partner Compose IT Minimizes manual handling Nordic AB of alarms and incidents Created in 1863, the Blekinge Regional Council (external link) oversees healthcare, public dental care, traffic and public transportation, and regional development, culture and education for Blekinge County, in the south of . The county has approximately 160,000 inhabitants within five municipalities. It is the smallest administrative county, with less than 1% of the total area of Sweden. Share this Many IT systems Atea then approached Compose IT, The team implemented the but little visibility an experienced consultancy and Compose Operation Platform with the “One success factor in this systems integrator whose Compose Watson AIOps Event Manager is to be able to invest in Like many government organizations, Collection modules are designed to solution, which provides a the pre-study to work Sweden’s Blekinge Regional Council complement the Watson AIOps consolidated view of the region’s IT together with a client and had a myriad of IT systems and solution. Compose IT subsequently systems across multiple focusing on value instead applications across its internal ran a successful demonstration of the environments. Its AI and machine of price.” organizations. The IT Infrastructure Watson AIOps software’s capability learning capabilities help deliver department, tasked with monitoring for the client in March 2019 and actionable insights, and the solution —Anna Trägårdh, Project Manager, all those systems, faced a daunting promised go-live before summer. automatically groups events related to IBM Business Partner Atea task. It had numerous, separate the same problem and provides monitoring solutions for individual context for faster resolution. systems, but no single view of its information and that alerts and alarms “The Compose Collection “Watson AIOps is really good at environment. There was no go to the right recipient. Adding the software modules built in collecting information from many integration between these tools, Compose Collection tools to the Watson AIOps Event different sources and centralizing the which led to duplication of work and Watson AIOps umbrella system also Manager were the tools information to one point,” says longer lead times for solving provides the client with the Markus Carlsson, Head of problems. Finally, without an that made this perfect for opportunity to build group or other Professional Services at Compose IT. integrated event monitoring solution, the client.” customized views with drill-down IT personnel had to manually Compose IT not only provided functions and alarm enrichment. correlate alarms with telemetry, —Peter Håkansson, Sales Director, systems integration and consultancy, having no systematic way to IBM Business Partner Compose IT According to Hans Wahlgren, Nordic AB but it also contributed a critical distinguish between false and Business Development Director at component of the overall solution. Its true alarms. Compose IT, adding dynamic event Compose Collection software management to a monitoring solution modules — Dynamic Dashboard, “The client needed a holistic overview such as Watson AIOps is critical: A consolidated Dynamic Event Management, Event of the monitoring,” says Anna “Today one of the challenges if you Routing and Reports and Trägårdh, Project Manager at Atea. event monitoring have an operation center like this, is Visualization — offer the client an “They wanted to be more effective that you have lots of screens with solution integrated dashboard and event and proactive as an organization thousands of alarms or events being classification engine to help the and have a full ability to overview A team from Atea and Compose IT shown on these screens. And users region better manage events in the their IT systems.” began working together with don’t really know which of these Watson AIOps system. representatives from the region’s IT events are actually critical.” Now, To establish priorities and determine infrastructure department and other The Watson AIOps solution lets the users only see those events and the client’s specific demands, Atea stakeholders. During the pre-study, alarms that they need to act upon. suggested conducting a pre-study to region monitor and visualize many Atea had identified the project’s risks, different sources of information, evaluate and map the region’s needs The combined Atea and Compose IT dependencies, problems and providing a wealth of information to potential software solutions. At the team chose an agile approach to opportunities and documented the about multiple systems. The end of the pre-study, the Watson deployment, successfully negotiating business requirements, which Compose Collection modules help AIOps Event Manager application— allowed the implementation team to the client’s evolving needs as the ® classify that information, determining now part of IBM Cloud Pak for project progressed. Working in use the detailed report as an who sees which alerts. This helps Watson AIOps—emerged as the clear sprints, the team would integrate implementation roadmap. ensure that users only see relevant solution for the region. systems with the Watson AIOps

2 application, present it to the client, important alerts. And, because alerts The project team was able to meet its Solution component and receive feedback. The solution and alarms are routed to the correct first, short go-live deadline and help ® did, in fact, go live in the early person, incident response times have the client achieve results in large part • IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps summer of 2019, as promised. The been reduced, as has the manual because Atea had already conducted team then hit pause until the fall and handling of alarms. a pre-study before engaging finished the final sprint of the project Compose IT for the systems Take the next step By centralizing its monitoring in early 2020, completing the project integration work. When the project To learn more about the IBM solution operations, the IT Infrastructure in one year. began, there was a clear roadmap to featured in this story, please contact department has improved its your IBM representative or IBM follow. “One success factor in this is productivity and proactivity. Further Business Partner. Centralized visibility to be able to invest in the pre-study improvements are expected as well- to work together with a client and About Atea means fewer false defined processes and routines are focusing on value instead of price,” Founded in 1968 in Kista, Sweden, IBM developed both within the IT alarms says Trägårdh. Business Partner Atea (external link) has Infrastructure department and positioned itself as Sweden’s leading IT After working with Atea and between units outlining clear roles Håkansson believes that the agile company. Its motto, “We build Sweden Compose IT to implement the and responsibilities. approach was another key success with IT,” reflects its efforts to lay the Watson AIOps Event Manager factor for the project. “It was like one foundations for a smarter and more “The Compose Collection software innovative Sweden by creating world-class solution, Blekinge Regional Council company. I was sitting with the client, modules built in Watson AIOps Event IT infrastructure throughout the country. It gained the capability to monitor its with Atea and the customer. It was myriad IT systems with a single Manager were the tools that made specializes in delivering products and really like we’re all in this together and services that simplify the operation and solution. This holistic visibility is this perfect for the client,” says Peter not a client, supplier, project type of management of its customers’ IT Håkansson, Sales Director at enhanced by the dynamic event setup. It was really a nice feeling.” environments. Atea operates around 30 management, dashboard visualization Compose IT. The client realized its offices across Sweden to be close to its and event routing capabilities of the quick results in part because the Trägårdh concurs. “We were able to customers. It has 2,600 employees, 1,500 Compose Collection modules. Compose Collection modules are handle small amounts of activities of which are consultants. pre-built for the Watson AIOps Event and still get results fast,” she says. About Compose IT Nordic AB The region can adapt views to Manager application and can be “The team with Compose IT, Atea Headquartered in , Sweden, IBM different roles, stakeholders and their quickly customized and implemented. and the client itself has been like one needs. Users can visualize the alarms Business Partner Compose IT (external link) group; it hasn’t been us or them. I has been providing customized solutions on a map of the region’s facilities and “They have really seen the positive think that the transparency we have and services in IT operations, IT service results of a consolidated view,” see graphical reports in real time. had in the group is another success management and application performance says Håkansson. “I think they have factor. That is my point of view as a management for more than 25 years. It Even as the region has gained greater also seen many opportunities to project manager, where I can see the serves customers in both the public and visibility into its systems, it has include more systems. They’re now private sectors and in most industries total benefits of the project.” reduced the number of alarms it starting to think, ‘What else can across the Nordic region. The company needs to respond to because the we actually consolidate into this has offices in Stockholm, Gävle and system filters out irrelevant and one-view system?’” Östersund, employs approximately 25 people and boasts sales of approximately SEK 40 million. © Copyright IBM Corporation 2021. IBM Corporation, New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504. Produced in the United States of America, March 2021. IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, and IBM Cloud Pak are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. IBM Business Partners set their own prices, which may vary. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. The performance data and client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.

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