smartOPTIMO migrates to Atlassian cloud for better functionality and performance

Transitioning to renewable energy sources is a necessary, yet complex undertaking. Renewable energy is volatile and not always available when needed. In addition, energy is being generated in a more decentralized way, such as through photovoltaic systems, while electricity consumption is rising. All of these factors have created a need for intelligent electricity and energy networks that ensure reliable, sufficient energy is available at all times. An integral part of these networks is smart metering systems that measure and control energy demand and feed-in. This is precisely the kind of solution that smartOPTIMO GmbH & Co. KG advises customers on, develops, and installs. 

Fast, solution-oriented communication both internally and externally

Founded in 2009 as a joint service company of municipal utilities Osnabrück and Münster, smartOPTIMO is now one of the leading municipal utility networks in Germany. Their customers and partners also include other municipal utilities, such as the Bielefeld or Gütersloh municipal utilities. Over 190 employees within smartOPTIMO collaborate with customers and partners, creating a productive exchange of information.  Asset management, which is included in the premium license of Jira Service Management, is particularly helpful for centralizing ITSM processes in one solution and meeting service-level agreements for customers. Internally, close cooperation and fast knowledge transfer are also crucial to ensure employee satisfaction and smooth operations. That's why smartOPTIMO has been using Atlassian products for eight years. About 100 employees use Jira as a ticket system to process internal and external requests. Confluence serves as their wiki, intranet, and the go-to tool for collaboration within teams and projects. The product is also integrated with smartOPTIMO's Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system, meaning technical product information is published automatically. 

Migrating for time savings, security, and new capabilities

In the past, smartOPTIMO’s Atlassian products ran on premise, but employees regularly experienced server failures of the service provider, which limited their productivity. Maintenance and troubleshooting were time-consuming tasks that took away from even more valuable work.

smartOPTIMO’s management also wanted quick access to new features, improvements, and innovations in their IT solutions, along with simple, uniform processes for employees such as single sign-on. Plus, since smartOPTIMO documents business-critical content on Confluence and must track information for auditing, ensuring security without the legacy firewall was crucial. 

Migrating to Atlassian cloud helped the team achieve these goals. The migration process began in October 2022  with the migration of Jira Service Management and was completed in March 2023. 

Application Managers Johannes Nazarov and Martina Gerhardt worked closely with Atlassian Solution Partner catworkx for additional support. smartOPTIMO spoke to various potential partners and decided in favor of catworkx due to their professional approach and coherent concept. Both companies share a structured, transparent, and agile approach. 

It was also important for both sides to carefully plan and implement the migration step by step. smartOPTIMO and catworkx jointly considered a hybrid on-premises/cloud approach, but ultimately decided on a cloud migration for a longer-term solution.

During the migration, project managers wanted to allow enough time to communicate with employees and ensure everyone felt well informed and heard. Although this extended the project duration by two months, the additional time made the change seamless and increased adoption.

A smooth migration with “unanimously positive” feedback

smartOPTIMO prepared for the migration by completing two successful test runs. Even as changes came up in the middle of the process, smartOPTIMO and catworx collaborated to stay on track and minimize delays. Whenever questions or issues arose, Atlassian and catworx provided expertise and fast resolutions. 

The migration itself was completed over a weekend to minimize impact on staff, customers, and partners. Their ticketing system was only down for a short period of time, and users were unfazed. "The feedback from our customers was unanimously positive. They were even a little surprised at how well everything worked. They were able to continue as usual directly after the migration. Nothing was missing," says Martina. "Our colleagues also quickly found their way around because the differences in look and feel were not so noticeable compared to before."

With Atlassian Guard Standard integrated with Azure Directory in the cloud, employees can also save time and mental load logging into their systems, while admins can granularly control who accesses which information. 

Johannes is also happy with the results. "Every employee has access to Confluence and Jira, which has a huge impact on our day-to-day work. This high level of digitalization is not yet common in our industry. With the increasing competition due to the opening of the energy markets, we see a clear advantage for us here, also when looking for new employees,” he says. 

Eliminating server issues, offloading maintenance, and gaining access to cloud features has opened up new possibilities to smartOPTIMO’s teams. “We have now already covered 95% of the requirements that we have implemented in the server world in the cloud,” Johannes says, “For the other 5%, we are now waiting to see to what extent Atlassian develops and provides them. At the same time, we now have a whole range of new features and functions at our disposal.”

Ultimately, smartOPTIMO employees can not only work better together thanks to the cloud migration, but customers and partners also benefit from faster, more secure communication.