ITENOS GmbH – future-proof solution for maximum customer and service orientation

ITENOS plans, implements and operates customised solutions in the areas of data centres (connectivity, co-location and housing in Germany), networks (IP network solutions for companies with branch structures) and managed IT services (planning, development and operation of hybrid managed hosting and IaaS solutions). ITENOS currently employs 195 staff and is an independent company within the Deutsche Telekom AG group.

As part of a digitalisation drive, the company planned to implement a new end-to-end solution for IT service management (customer service desk and internal IT service desk). The software they had been using up to that point was no longer able to meet ITENOS's requirements.
‘We were looking for an ITSM solution that would allow us to connect various systems, such as the Configuration Management Database (CMDB), via APIs and to use the live data from these systems in real time,’ explains Andreas Klug, Head of Processes & IT at ITENOS GmbH. Another reason for choosing a new solution was that ITENOS wanted to be more flexible and ensure that they could maintain and further develop the solution themselves, independently of the software provider's support. In addition, the product used previously could not guarantee high availability in the context of future requirements. ‘This is an unacceptable situation for an ICT specialist with a 24/7 help desk, 365 days a year. We can't afford to have downtime of several hours just to install an update,’ comments Andreas Klug from ITENOS.

To find a partner to support the project implementation, ITENOS did extensive research on Atlassian's partner base. ‘We were looking for a partner with many years of experience and a strong track record that could support us in the project with development services, support and training. We knew that the standard configuration of the Atlassian tools would not be sufficient to cover our requirements and that we would need some customisations,’ explains Torsten Macht, System Engineer – Applications at ITENOS GmbH.
‘catworkx was able to convince us with its services. The catworkx employees are competent, responsive to our requirements and respond quickly. The consulting, workshops and training provided by catworkx have been very helpful in implementing specific tasks – for example, the connections to other systems’.

The ITSM solution now includes a service desk where incidents for both employees and customers are logged. The service desk is linked to the configuration management database (CMDB). The CMDB contains all information about the customers' technical solutions, as well as customer data, service level agreements (SLAs) and contract data. When a customer needs to raise an incident, they can do so through a variety of channels (telephone, email, customer portal) – from first to third-level support. Employees also have the option of opening a case directly via a self-service portal.

IT managers use the monitoring platform Icinga to monitor the entire system landscape, their own network infrastructures and data centres, and to keep an eye on the load and performance, for example. This is also connected to Jira Service Management and provides the necessary information. Communication with customers also takes place via Jira. ITENOS has created a solution for sending e-mail notifications to groups of people at the customer's company, prioritised according to level of importance. Besides Jira Service Management and Confluence, ITENOS also uses several apps from the Atlassian Marketplace.

‘A major advantage of Atlassian, and an important decision criterion for us, was the large community of partners and third-party providers offering complementary tools and apps in the Atlassian Marketplace. This gives us the opportunity to integrate additional features into our next-gen ticket system without having to invest a great deal of development effort ourselves,’ explains Andreas Klug. ‘In addition, these partners provide very good support for questions of all kinds.’ Today, the company uses ScriptRunner from Adaptavist to automate workflows, Jira Workflow Toolbox from Decadis AG, nFeed from Valiantys to query external data, and eazyBI from EazyOne for additional reports, charts and dashboards.
Although the solution is still being expanded, 30 employees in the helpdesk are already using the new solution, and a total of 200 employees are working with the software. Andreas Klug summarises: ‘We were able to completely replace the old system and implement a completely new solution in just one year – that's a short period compared to other major projects for our IT. In addition, our way of working in the company has changed because our new solution promotes service-oriented thinking and action.’

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