BACKGROUND SUPERHEROES

When you monitor networks of 1000 customers with more than 50.000 devices around the globe with live- monitoring, something is always happening somewhere. A power failure in Florida, faulty hardware in Cape Town – and the system comes to a standstill. At the same time, an alarm is received at the Operations Center (OC) at NTS. More than half of them have to be considered as critical. These have to be rectified in a very short time.

Dominik Zeiler is one of the 45 NTS employees that work on the frontline in the nerve center that is staffed 24/7. It is Saturday, 7:30 PM. The 24-year old started his twelve-hour shift half an hour ago. From the beginning of the shift, it’s evident that it will not be a cushy job. In fact, it is a task of permanently being on the ball under tremendous time pressure. Messages are received by the dozen. It is Dominik’s task to get an idea of the reported errors. He has a couple of seconds and occasionally two or three minutes for it and he needs to judge the criticalness of an incident, find approaches for the solutions or forward it to his colleagues that are on standby for further processing. They will dissect the incident by using their intellect as a scalpel. The diagnosis is followed by the required operations: notifying the company technician, to guide them through what needs to be done, organize replacement devices, send a NTS technician… Every second counts here.

Despite the enormous time pressure, there is no visible rush. The specialists work on their computers quietly and are fully concentrated. Generally, everything appears to be very normal. No large wall screens where dazzling network plans flicker, no red lamps that suddenly flash and especially no sirens or similar devices.

“We don’t have something like a command control center and we also don’t need it. That is all mostly for show”, chuckles Wolfgang Moser, Head of OC and thus master of 195 OC employees from 31 countries which are located in Graz, Vienna and Klagenfurt – and also in Leipzig Germany. He likes to call them “Superheroes in the background”. Their self-confident slogan states: “Never call us a call center!”

By the time Dominik was finally relieved from his duty at 7 o’clock the next morning, more than 1,000 messages were received during that shift. Then he gets rid of his adrenalin in the gym in order to be able to fall asleep.

SUPERHEROES FACTBOX

• 195 employees
• 45 employees on 24/7 duty
• 1000 customers in live monitoring with 50.000 devices
• 99 Mio. Checks per day