Key Challenges
Vix lacked a single tool to monitor its complex systems, which slowed down incident reporting and management, created security challenges and affected customer service.
Key Results
After automating and centralizing data analytics, Vix gained holistic visibility across its network. This made reporting hundreds of times faster, enabling teams to resolve issues quickly and ensure smooth transit operations.
Vix Technology is a global leader in intelligent transportation systems, automated fare collection, and transit analytics. Transit agencies and operators — including the major transportation systems of major cities like Edmonton and Seattle — rely on Vix to help travelers process fare payments and arrive safely and on time at their destination. Vix solutions are powered by an extremely complex information technology (IT) footprint, which includes multiple different cloud-based customer systems, each with heterogeneous data sources and third-party elements.
Previously, Vix relied on disparate decentralized systems that worked independently and never “talked” to each other. This led to siloed teams using different systems, which created inconsistent workflows. The operations teams would manually extract data from logs and spreadsheets, trace bits and pieces by hand, and create alerts and dashboards manually.
Vix needed a more comprehensive, efficient means of monitoring systems. Its teams needed to address large volumes of security incidents quickly and be proactive in issue prevention, to ensure the quality of customer service.
Fast forwarding to today, automation has transformed how Vix tackles its IT and security operations. “Security reporting, which was done 100% manually in the past, is now fully automated on the Splunk Cloud Platform,” says Gavin Wilson, head of global cloud operations at Vix Technology. “While we are keeping the same level of manpower for security monitoring, Splunk allows us to generate reports in minutes, as compared to a whole day before, and with better accuracy.” Vix can now use its resources on other pressing business activities.
This greater efficiency frees up the team to proactively secure infrastructure, instead of only reacting to incidents. When incidents do arise, Vix’s teams now have the time and bandwidth to resolve issues. Wilson notes, “With Splunk in place, we are handling far more incidents than before, simply because it lets us find and fix more potential problems and maintain a healthy IT environment.”
Vix is also using Splunk as a customer behavior analytics tool to surface trends of how they use the service and actionable insights, which helps teams stay ahead of issues, makes its services more reliable and increases customer satisfaction.
While we are keeping the same level of manpower for security monitoring, Splunk allows us to generate reports in minutes, as compared to a whole day before, and with better accuracy.
Using Splunk means Vix is able to replace multiple tools with a single data analytics tool, and bring data across its highly distributed IT environment together into a single platform. This tool consolidation has allowed Vix to gain true global visibility with Splunk and use the platform to automate compliance management for IT government regulations and service level agreements. It also allows time for the teams to focus on continuous improvement to products and services.
Consolidating its tools has made training and day-to-day work more efficient for Vix’s teams. “We now monitor the health of our global operation on a unified platform, and this removes the pressure of providing unnecessary, additional training to our staff for using multiple systems,” says Wilson. “Besides saving time and effort, this reserves our bandwidth for high-priority tasks. We can now focus on expanding our customer bases to generate more income for the company.”
Vix has also benefited from the professional knowledge and experience of Splunk’s support team. “Splunk’s support team is always available to help when we are in need,” Wilson says.
What’s more, using Splunk has introduced a new revenue stream for Vix. “We are looking to resell Splunk to our customers, who are mainly transit agencies and operators, and position it as our customer-facing tool,” Wilson notes. “For example, we can authorize our customers to access useful information on the Splunk Dashboard to benefit their own operations.”
Vix has seen Splunk enhance the experience of everyone from those on its IT teams, to the travelers who, whether they know it or not, rely on Vix’s solutions each day as they get to school, work or their next vacation destination. And as Vix incorporates the use of Splunk to more of its customers, their operations will only become safer and smoother.
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