50-51 / 60
REPORT
SUPERHEROES IN
THE BACKGROUND
facts
60 employees
24 employees on 24/7 duty
500 customers to look after,
out of them 70 customers in
live monitoring with 8,000
devices
2,2 million alarms
32,000 job tickets
650 tickets per employee
When you monitor networks of 70
customerswithmore than 8,000 devices
around the globe with live- monitoring,
something is always happening some-
where. A power failure in Florida, faulty
hardware in CapeTown– and the system
comes to a standstill. At the same time,
an alarm is received at the Service
Operations Center (SOC) at NTS. This
happens 94,000 times a month and
more than half of it has to be considered
as critical. These have to be rectified in a
very short time.
„Twentyfourseven“
Dominik Zeiler
is one of the 20 NTS
employees that work on the frontline in
the nerve center that is staffed 24/7. It is
Saturday, 7:30 PM. The 21-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 perma-
nently being on the ball under tremend-
ous time pressure. Messages are recei-
ved 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 com-
pany technician, to guide them through
2.2 million alarms per year, orders by the second,
up to one’s ears in adrenalin: one night with the
troubleshooters in the SOC of NTS
Words by:
Michael Samec
Photos by:
Marija Kanizaj
what needs to be done, organize replace-
ment 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 beverynormal. No
large wall screens where dazzling net-
work 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 SOC
and thus master
of 60 SOC employees, from 8 countries,
which are located in Graz, Vienna
and Klagenfurt. He likes to call them “su-
Server failure in Cape Town!
The whole company stands still:
now every second counts!
10 PM
MIDNIGHT
perheroes in the background”. Their self-
confident slogan states: “Never call us a
call center!”
By the time Dominikwas 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.
5 AM
Even after 10 hours of pure
pressure: competent,
concentrated and friendly.
Not even halftime, but
already more than 500
calls received.
» NEVER CALL US
A CALL CENTER” «
NTS man, Center Director
of Superheroes
51
50