T-Systems Austria's journey to automation excellence with Camunda

T-Systems Austria, a part of the leading German IT service provider T-Systems, faced significant challenges due to manual and unstructured IT operations within their extensive data center. The manual handling of virtual machine (VM) provisioning, patching, and incident response resulted in high operational costs, long throughput times, and increased risk of human error. The company embarked on a transformative journey to automate its IT processes and turned to myProcess, a robust automation platform powered by Camunda, to meet its objectives.

The challenge:

• Unstructured work: Processes were mainly managed through email communications, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of standardization.
• Manual labor: Repetitive tasks such as VM patching were performed manually, consuming significant time and resources.
• Long throughput times: The provisioning of VMs could take weeks, delaying customer projects and impacting service delivery.
• Transparency: There was a lack of real-time visibility into the status of IT operations.

The solution:

T-Systems Austria developed myProcess, an automation platform leveraging the capabilities of Camunda’s workflow engine. The platform served as an end-to-end ordering portal, offering 30+ automated use cases, including patch automation and VM creation. The user-friendly interface enabled request submissions that triggered predefined workflows, providing real-time insights and transparency.

Key components in achieving success:

• Enabling the team: Investment in an eight-person team dedicated to the development, operation, and standardization of the myProcess platform.
• Company support: Access to essential master data and collaboration with technical teams for expertise in complex automation tasks.
• Iterative approach: Starting with manual workflows, the team incrementally automated substeps, leading to fully automated workflows through continuous improvement.

Results:

• Patch automation workflow saved over 8,500 hours in one year.
• Provisioning time for standard VMs reduced to under two hours.
• Over 24,065 hours of manual work were saved in 2023.
• Improved data quality, increased customer satisfaction, and the potential for new business opportunities.
• Transparent, real-time insights into process statuses, enhancing user experience and team collaboration.

Looking to the future:

T-Systems Austria is preparing to migrate from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8, with expectations of increased efficiency and a simplified architecture. The transition will involve new communication protocols and the adoption of long polling for front-end changes, ensuring continued transparency and user engagement.

Through the implementation of myProcess and the power of Camunda’s process orchestration capabilities, T-Systems Austria has successfully overcome its operational challenges. The company has demonstrated the importance of having a focused team, strong company support, and an iterative approach to workflow improvement. T-Systems Austria’s case serves as an inspiring model for other organizations seeking to achieve automation excellence in IT operations.