Managed OTRS enables GÉANT to meet formerly hard-to-fulfill SLAs, relying on the internal operation of the system

Agents additionally used a separate mailbox. Without the possibility of uniting all available information as well as the email communication regarding problems in one central place, efficient workflows were hard to establish. “Providing high IT connectivity services and network monitoring solutions also means we needed to manage lots of small research projects with many different types of data. This required a reliable but also flexible software which makes all the project communication transparent,” explains Tony Barber, Head of GÉANT’s Operations Center. Meeting SLAs for internal and external issues processed by GÉANT plays an important role for the network’s daily business.

OTRS Tickets are used to track internal work (change & service requests, problems) and external issues (customer support issues like service requests and incidents). “We make extensive use of the SLA capabilities in combination with the workflow possibilities in OTRS. This guarantees that the issue will be attended in time and helps to follow a consistent approach regarding problem solving and standardized output,“ says Barber. After introducing OTRS, NOC staff experienced that the automated features, used along with the email/ticket functionality, freed up a lot of time and helped to provide an easy-to-understand communication flow. Now all related issues are collected in only one place, something that was not possible before.