Local traffic in the
Public Cloud

Initial situation and objective

The strong increase in passenger numbers, more and more public transport-related apps, and an exponential increase in digital requests demand a continuous expansion of IT structures. With a classic on-premise solution, such dynamic growth can no longer be mapped cost-effectively. However, the selection of a suitable public cloud provider at KVV was subject to a demanding list of requirements including scalability, high availability and security.

Performance and reliability for millions of passengers

Web-based offerings are among the most important components of KVV’s customer service. Timetable information in particular is one of the critical factors here. Numerous connected systems rely on the information provided at all times, including several ticket apps, displays of passenger information at stops, and real-time integration in Google Maps.

Maximilian Obenaus, Chief Information Officer of KVV, makes the importance of the infrastructure clear: “If it doesn’t work for half a day, with 170 million passengers a year, you can quickly calculate how many customers we alienate.” Performance and high availability were therefore fundamental requirements for the cloud infrastructure.

Long-term growth and daily performance peaks

On-premise solutions cannot react quickly enough to the special scaling requirements of a transport association like KVV. Servers have to be added again and again, and new functional requirements have to be met reliably. The necessary flexibility can now only be provided cost-effectively in virtualized environments. “We wanted to go to the cloud so that we wouldn’t have to rethink the dimensioning of the IT infrastructure at regular intervals,” explains Maximilian Obenaus. What applies to long-term growth is also reflected in daily operations. “Local public transport, and with it access to timetable information, is subject to decidedly strong fluctuations,” says Obenaus.

“We’re talking about situations where you can’t respond fast enough in your own hosting and with non-virtualized data centers.” Performance peaks during rush hour, due to events or unpredictable weather influences must be compensated seamlessly and fail-safe by vertical scaling of IT performance.

Data protection as an exclusion criterion when choosing a cloud provider

The strict data protection requirements for personal services considerably narrow down the field of candidates for suitable cloud providers. For example, it is a mandatory requirement that all data remain in the German legal area. The legal framework set out by EU laws must be demonstrably met. This legally prescribed security requirement is without alternative as a selection criterion. Cloud operation with large global hyperscalers was therefore out of the question for those responsible at KVV right from the start.

Realization

In the competition for the best cloud solution, gridscale was able to prevail in all points at the Karlsruher Verkehrsverbund. Several German cloud providers were examined by KVV and subjected to numerous functional and performance tests. “In the end, gridscale convinced us the most,” says Obenaus, explaining the choice of gridscale. In addition to the complete fulfillment of the catalog of requirements consisting of security, high availability and scalability, not least the good personal consultation played a role.

Successful migration and easy operation

KVV was able to migrate its existing infrastructure setup to the gridscale cloud without any problems and expand it further. Thanks to the high usability of the gridscale panel and the reliable gridscale support, the move was realized in record time. Only a quarter of a year passed from the conclusion of the contract to the operational solution. Within a short period of time, the system was running at high performance and absolutely trouble-free. All employees who are entrusted with the system have very easy access to the backend via the cloud panel in order to start, shut down or even add servers. And, as Maximilian Obenaus points out, “… without having to spend hours digging through some manual.”

Easy scalability

The system has already been expanded several times since it went live in order to respond to increasing data volumes and higher computing requirements. With gridscale, KVV has a cloud infrastructure that can keep pace with the company’s growth in the long term. With no performance disruptions, downtime risks or downtime, the highly available system can be expanded with memory, storage or compute cores with just a few clicks. “When new requirements come in, we can respond at lightning speed today thanks to gridscale.” Manufacturers of apps and services can also easily access the systems during development via numerous APIs. Servers can be cloned quickly and easily for test runs and preliminary simulations.

Data protection in certified high-security data centers

The KVV’s data and application are stored with multiple redundancies in a German data center certified to the strict ISO 27001 standard. All data protection and IT compliance requirements in the public sector are guaranteed at all times. The Trusted Cloud seal of approval from the BMWi, with which gridscale was awarded, also guarantees quality, security and legal compliance for the KVV in accordance with the strict standard of German data protection regulations.