InterMapper Helps Keep Västtrafik Running

Customer: Göran Åvhlik, Systems Engineer

Company: Västtrafik

Location: Gothenberg, Sweden

Business: Coordinate all public transportation – buses, taxis, ferries, and trains – in the Västra Götaland region of Sweden.

InterMapper's Role: Help maintain 24 x 7 uptime of websites and over 130 network devices that are critical to the overall company network.

Quote: “InterMapper is so easy. You can learn to use it in an hour.”

Public transportation is a wonderful thing…when it works. People get to where they are going, traffic is reduced, economies of scales are enjoyed by individuals and governments, and the environment breathes a sigh of relief.

In western Sweden, Västtrafik shoulders the responsibility for keeping rail, bus, tram, ferry, and taxi systems up and running. About 500,000 trips a day are taken on the network of public transportation options that Västtrafik supports and monitors. Riders, vehicle operators, and administrators rely on:

  • websites that list schedules, fares, routes, and policies

  • 300-400 publicly placed monitors that allow riders to see when trains, buses, or ferries are on-time

  • in-vehicle monitors that allow drivers to view the system

  • over 130 network devices that keep information flowing

Göran Åvhlik, Systems Engineer and his three-person team are in the middle of it all. They're charged with keeping Västtrafik's network up and running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “We're running reality systems,” says Åvhlik. “People want to know that their bus will be there in five minutes. Bus drivers want to know why they can't empty their ticket machine.”

About two years ago, Västtrafik and Åvhlik were looking for a way to watch their websites, monitors, and critical network elements. “We looked at HP OpenView but it is too big. We'd need one person full-time to manage it.” They chose InterMapper for its ease of use. “It took about an hour to learn. We can see just what we need to see.”

Åvhlik has configured InterMapper to alert him and others to problems via email. At first, alerts would call his cell phone but he realized that there was little he could do from home in the middle of the night. Now, email alerts time out at the end of the work day and emergency night services are called if something happens during off-hours.

“InterMapper gives us a good overview of our network and we're able to create different maps for different clients. For example, we have maps for bus drivers who communicate via GPRS to check on the system when they have a problem with the network.”

Usually, InterMapper maps show Åvhlik and his team problems before regional operations or, more importantly, customers notice. “I call and say, 'Hey, you've got a problem with something' and they can fix it. Before we had InterMapper, we just waited for things to break and people to call us.”