Scania Case
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Containers became the solution for public transport in Kalmar
The original mission was to take care of the operations of a new public transport ticket system. Pretty soon however, the technical systems management within the Kalmar County region and its unit manager Michael Ceder realized that there was another goal to achieve: A new way of developing systems operations in the region. OpenShift, the container technology and the collaboration with RedBridge provided new innovative ways forward.
Challenge
An outdated platform
The regional traffic in the Kalmar Region was using an outdated payment system for tickets. It was built on a platform and on technical components that were complex to maintain and lacked the ability to handle journeys across county boundaries. In addition, there was a new country-wide standard to relate to - BoB - for payment and handling of tickets in public transport.
The four regions Halland, Jönköping County, Kronoberg County and Region Kalmar County decided to jointly develop a new system. The development was carried out as a team effort by the four regions, but it was decided early on that operations would be handled by Region Kalmar County. The reason for this was partly because Kalmar already had a well-functioning organization for operations, but also that they had a strong will to adopt new technology and meet the challenges that entailed.
Solution
An open environment
Since Region Kalmar County had previously worked with Red Hat, they decided to go with their product OpenShift, after evaluating different options. However, they needed help from a technical partner with experience in both OpenShift and container development in general. RedBridge entered the picture to help set up the solution.
The ticket and payment solution was delivered in the form of containers, with a central backend where a large part of the business logic can be found. There were two important success factors the solution needed to live up to: 1) The ability to serve public transport in several different regions and 2) The OpenShift platform had to have the potential to run several of the systems used by Region Kalmar County.
Results
A solution to many problems
The ticket system itself will be put in production in the spring of 2020, and it will allow travellers in the four regions to buy tickets and view their travel history in a smooth mobile app or via a regular browser. In addition, travel across county borders will be greatly simplified, which also contributes to the goal: to make citizens travel more collectively.
Another important merit lies in the OpenShift platform itself, which has given Region Kalmar County's technical system management the opportunity to run containerized applications themselves. In addition to the pure consultancy efforts, RedBridge has been an important partner for the region's operating unit by facilitating a great knowledge transfer of OpenShift, which has contributed to the rapid start.
OpenShift and container technology have in themselves broadened the region's opportunities to develop and operate system solutions together with many different suppliers. The end result: a more modern regional operations and better service for citizens.
In addition to the pure consultancy efforts, RedBridge has been an important partner for the region's operating unit by facilitating a great knowledge transfer of OpenShift, which has contributed to the rapid start.
Michael Ceder, Head of IT Applications
Keep reading
Download Region Kalmar County's presentation from Red Hat Forum 2019 here.