IT Operations (ITO)
IT Operations (ITO) is a versatile department that offers a wide range of IT services to international clients in German and in English. Our colleagues engage in their activity based on standard and customer specific processes in a highly heterogeneous technological environment.
Our employees carry out the support of almost all of T-Systems’ strategic customers to the increasing satisfaction of our partners. Our main customers are T-Systems, Deka Bank, Deutsche Post DHL, Shell, Philips, Daimler, Heineken, E-ON, Portigon, Georg Fischer, and British American Tobacco.
Our service portfolio covers two major areas: operation and support. The main tasks of supporting colleagues include order processing, fulfillment, various reports, internal accounts, creating and publishing reports, user privileges, obtaining licenses, security support, resource management, audit support and presales activities.
The operators primarily carry out the administration of IT applications, middleware, operating systems, databases, data centers, networks, and storage. This includes planning, deployment, installation, modification, maintenance, upgrades, monitoring, remote control, development, repairing errors, fulfilling customer specific requests, implementing migrations, preparing reports, compliance with safety standards, analyzing performance problems, and implementing network data backup.
Sites: Budapest, Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged.
ITO service portfolio covers the following operational areas:
Database
Database operation is a responsibility involving the utmost trust, as the operatorshave full access to customer data. In addition, even minimum database downtime can cause serious problems in a production environment. The Oracle database is highly scalable and often widely used for the management and processing of data from international companies.
Oracle DB is a relational database management framework, in which objects become directly accessible to both users and applications with the help of SQL. The Oracle Database Administrators (DBA) working for us are responsible for maintaining the continuous and error-free operation of the databases. This involves a variety of tasks on a daily basis including database installation, deletion, and updating; managing users and permissions in the database, monitoring, planning and, if necessary, expanding available storage space; improving database performance; modifying database objects or backing up and restoring databases.
Operating Systems
The function of operating systems (OS) is to operate computer hardware, distribute resources, schedule program implementation, and ensure communication between the user and the system. Our OS teams carry out the installation and operation of the operating systems prevalent in large enterprises. This is the case for all versions of Windows Server, and Unix-based systems in separate groups: the various versions of HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, and Linux. Our tasks include detecting hardware errors and coordinating related repair, implementing operating system level changes, and installing security patches. During troubleshooting, we have a very important connecting role in coordinating between the support teams of the layers below (Hardware, Storage, Classic and Virtual Infrastructure, and Network) and above (Middleware, Database and Application) the OS.
Mainframe
The responsibility of the colleagues working in this area is connected to the largest capacity and at the same time most reliable IT systems, the Mainframes. The technical basis for Mainframe systems evolved long before personal computers and is still being developed. An important part of the key systems of large companies operates in a Mainframe environment. Within the ITO Mainframe Group, we carry out the administration of these systems in several sub-areas, such as: application and database management, application monitoring, user management, data storage, data transmission, and network operation. Our team works in close collaboration with German colleagues to ensure that T-Systems Mainframe operation is implemented at the highest possible professional standard.
Middleware Operation
What is middleware? Increasingly widespread in the world of IT, in terms of function middleware is not an operating system and does not belong to the application layer. It creates a link between the two levels, thus ensuring the platform independence of the business logic. Middleware is a type of service platform that ensures resources, connections and communication for the application. An abundance of middleware technologies can be found among the systems operated by ITO, from simple servers to more complex application servers. We operate J2EE application servers for several large customers, the most important being: IBM Websphere Application Server, Oracle Weblogic Application Server, Oracle GlassFish, and Apache Tomcat. The Java application servers allow our partners to use high-availability and scalable web applications in everyday life. Exchange of data between different systems is ensured by so-called Messaging systems. Without being exhaustive, systems operated by us include: IBM WebSphere MQ, Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service, Swift MQ, and Tibco Rendezvous. Since the mentioned tools are available to users on the Internet or via customers’ internal networks, it is imperative that we do not deal with a variety of web servers and WCMS solutions. That is precisely why our colleagues have a high level knowledge for example of IIS, Apache, Livelink, Adobe CQ5 and other servers.
Security
The Security area provides large companies with managed IT security services. The activity of IT security experts cover the entire life cycle of security solutions. The most important services: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Antivirus and Emergency Response (TEAM AVERT), Trust Center Solutions, Corporate PKI, Desktop Security & Encryption Solutions, and Anti-Spam & Email Encryption.
Unique in Central Europe, we provide the opportunity for learning and experience to experienced and career starter employees interested in the IT security industry.
Application support
Application support: or what is happening in the firing line?
The IT services provided to our customers cover several layers. Of these, it is application support that is the “closest” to our customers. Users reach the mostly custom-developed applications running on servers through clients, which can be a browser, desktop application, or a special hw-sw solution. An individual application may be used by thousands or tens of thousands of users simultaneously. For this reason it is important for our colleagues to have extensive expertise.
The operation runs on both Windows and Linux servers, and almost all interfaces are in use at one application or another. The server range includes web servers, content managers, and file servers, which communicate with their environment through multiple protocols. From all this, it can be seen that the operators require very extensive expertise. Our colleagues have great experience in script writing; in particular, utilities for environment maintenance are written in Perl, batch, bash and PowerShell environments.
As an application operator, opportunity is given to get a comprehensive picture of the different areas of information technology and their industrial applications, which later provides help in specialization. Application support teams have served as a “springboard” for many outstanding professionals.
Network
The Network team is an important part of ITO, the main task of which is network operation. The team members have several years of professional experience. Accordingly, their level of professional expertise in this area is outstanding.
Their tasks include developing the infrastructure necessary to access the Internet, to solve the related problems, as well as continuous network expansion and transformation. The Network team provides for the protection of the ITSH network, firewall operation, the smooth operation of more than 500 various network devices (switches, firewalles etc.), and the operation of the Office Avaya system connected to the telephones located on the desks of nearly every employee in the company. In order to carry out the mentioned tasks and to maintain the networks, the team strives to resolve every incident in line with their expertise, on call 24/7.
SAP
Our company’s wide range also includes SAP operation. SAP is the world leading integrated enterprise management system, which means a suite covering all of a given company’s business processes. Our customers’ systems are ensured via T-Systems Cloud (APPC) service. More than 960 SAP SIDs are operated on this platform, where the entire portfolio of SAP products can be found, especially on the Linux operating system, with an Oracle database background. In addition to conventional operational tasks, employees also carry out implementation assignments and assignments of a project nature. Accordingly, the teams have the chance to participate in work requiring various technical skills and professional experience, allowing all employees to find challenges appropriate to their stage of professional development from junior to senior levels.
Application Management
Application Management is a complete product chain, which provides coverage from the preparation of software packages supplied to our clients, through testing right up to troubleshooting. Customer Engineering, Scripting, Packaging allows T-Systems to provide controlled, maintained workstations for clients. The task of the Quality Assurance team is assurance of quality; their main activity is testing, besides which our colleagues carry out managerial and onsite coordinator tasks. SW Deployment encompasses support for servers, installation of software in Empirum and SCCM environments, troubleshooting at 2nd and last level, building, maintenance of infrastructures and Patch Management.
DSC (Dynamic Services for Collaboration)
At DSC, colleagues provide cloud-based services such as Hyper-V virtualization, saving with DPM, monitoring with SCOM, construction/configuration of various versions and types of SharePoint environments. Using Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange products, we provide corporate mail server services for users, through which they can access e-mails, calendars and business card albums at virtually any time and anywhere: from PCs, laptops and mobile devices.
In the course of everyday operations, we also deal with incident and change management, but the AD team also carries this out at day-to-day level by handling requests. If any change has to be implemented on an Exchange or AD server, then we write the RFC and runbook necessary for this. Another area that belongs to us: monitoring the entire DSC infrastructure.
Mobile Device Management
Mobile Device Management means the centralized management of mobile devices. With the spread of smart phones and tablets, it is increasingly important to integrate these devices into the corporate infrastructure. This ensures remote software distribution, data exchange, data security and e-mail configuration. Our task is the testing, operation and 2nd and last level support of applications responsible for this. In addition, our profile is extended with development, resource-freeing automation, system structuring and configuration. As a consequence of our approach, we also provide VIP support. Our activity ensures mobile contact and collaboration, irrespective of the user’s location. We guarantee a high availability of services with proactive server monitoring and 24/7 server oversight.
Depending on the position, the operation and support of IT systems requires our colleagues to have a wide range of process and system knowledge. At ITO, knowledge necessary to run operating systems, databases, and servers (Linux, AIX, Windows, Solaris, Oracle, MSSQL, MAXDB, x86, and PowerPC platforms) plays an important role. Colleagues dealing with security services have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge with regard to Mcaffe/TrendMicro/ISS/RSA/Symantec solutions, and the intricacies of Perimeter Security, Log analysis and attack/defense methodologies. The work of some of the teams requires a network background (Cisco, Juniper, Checkpoint, F5, ADVA) and/or developing background (PERL, Shellscript, PL/SQL, HTML, JS, PHP, and Java). The monitoring colleagues need to be proficient in the fields of server, OS, performance, applications, and databases. Worth mentioning among the required competencies are knowledge of ERP systems (SAP), knowledge of virtualization technologies (VMware, Hyper-V), storage and backup knowledge (SAN, NAS, NetUP, Veritas), or high availability (Cluster, Failover, LoadBalancer, DR) knowledge. A thorough understanding of ITIL processes (Incident, Problem, Change, Order Management) is necessary for the daily work of the vast majority of colleagues.
In the above areas, ITO can count highly qualified, internationally recognized experts among its ranks. However, it is not unusual for someone to develop from a trainee position to become among the best in the industry in the span of just a few years. Accordingly, the department is glad to invest in the support of young talent. The colleagues working in our department have the opportunity, in addition to continuous professional training, to use the most cutting-edge products on a complex virtual infrastructure. In addition to learning a wide range of IT services, there is the opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge with regard to process operation, as well as planning, coordination, and implementation. Furthermore, in addition to participation in international projects, employees receive numerous opportunities to develop organizational, communication and language skills.