How innovative IT services helped Arriva become more competitive
12 September 2018
Euvic, by solving the critical problems of Arriva’s IT-services and improving the existing services, helped its client to leverage the new platform. And, as a result, to win more business.
What was the aim
Arriva Sweden* was running its infrastructure from a co-location site in Denmark supporting over 3900 employees and providing services to 170 million customers every year. The on-premises solution was not stable or flexible enough to meet the business and customers’ needs. Due to the progressing digitalization of the transporation business, they needed a partner who could both understand their business needs as well as help them innovate. The aim was to become more competitive in the transportation industry and, at the same time, to build a more stable and flexible IT-environment.
How was it achieved
After Euvic was chosen as Arriva’s innovation service provider, we have executed several projects. Our first aim was to solve the most critical problems regarding the flexibility and stability of all IT-services:
→ Arriva decided to move away from the hosted environment in Denmark and make a transition to the cloud. Arriva chose AWS over Azure and other providers because of the breath of services, security, support for developers, and the possibility to leverage existing investments by bringing the existing Microsoft licenses to AWS. With Euvic’s help hundreds of Windows servers were migrated to AWS, including business critical large SQL and Oracle databases in less than 700 hours.
Euvic analysed the existing applications and made them cloud-ready without significantly changing the architecture of the core infrastructure, guaranteeing tangible benefits to Arriva early-on.
→ After a traditional “lift and shift”, we looked into how to improve the existing services. We achieved it, for example, by:
- migrating several SQL & Oracle databases to AWS Relational Database Services (RDS) to take advantage of the ease of use of managed services.
- migrating the end-user-platform to Euvic’s modern managed service platform, including Office 365 for all users in order to improve the user environment.
- migrating Trapeze, a business-critical planning system that was used to schedule and optimize routes and staffing for trains and buses, to AWS. Trapeze was running in a Citrix environment hosted in Denmark, but the on premises solution was expensive and lacked the required functionalities. 3900 employees needed access to a web-based application to be able to use the most basic functions of Trapeze while around 190 users needed access to its more advanced functions.Euvic retired the Citrix environment of Arriva by using AWS Appstream 2.0 and AWS WorkSpaces.
→ When the platform was more stable and flexible, and the users finally had a modern IT-platform to work on, Arriva could concentrate their efforts on enhancing the business value that IT could provide by building a bus- and train-portal with some of the latest technologies regarding IOT and Information solutions, helping them win several tenders for train and bus-contracts.
What was the business outcome
The move from the hosted environment to AWS and to the Euvic’s managed end-user-platform, including O365, was successful. Arriva achieved:
- a more stable environment with fewer service outages, which is more flexible and suitable for the new digital requirements of the transportation industry
- happier and users thanks to a more modern end-user-platform.
More importantly, Arriva could leverage the new platform and Euvic’s competence to create new platforms for buses and trains, which helped them win new business. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, with their old solution.
*Arriva is a multinational public transport company headquartered in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, United Kingdom. It was established in 1938 as T Cowie and through a number of mergers and acquisitions was rebranded Arriva in 1997, and became a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn in 2010. Arriva operates bus, coach, train, tram and waterbus services in 14 countries across Europe.
Euvic has delivered lots of successful development projects by listening carefully to our customers to thoroughly understand their needs. We have 1000 responsive and well-trained developers who are ready for their/our next mission.
Fot. Leif Jørgensen from Wikimedia Commons
Read also how we decreased Swedbank’s non-operational risk for half of the price.
back