The Situation:

Transurban is an innovative road operator of major toll road networks, with the aim of building and managing safer, smarter, and more sustainable roads—to solve the pressing transport challenges that are slowing cities down. Transurban has embarked on a mission to establish enterprise-wide visibility of operations and achieve comprehensive visibility of all their Intelligent Transport System (ITS) road assets across Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria.

The Process:

AC3 (trading as JDS Australia at the time of delivery) was engaged in January 2022 to develop Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI) use cases, laying the foundation for Transurban’s proactive monitoring of assets. The team then initiated real-time monitoring for six major roads in Queensland, leveraging Splunk’s leading-edge AIOps capabilities. During the process, data was onboarded from various sources, including Vcenter, VMs, physical servers (Windows and Linux), network switches, and Dell iDRAC, using Universal Forwarders, Technical Add-ons, and Apps. They then implemented ITSI services, enabling service availability and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) tracking, and alerting mechanisms for each road asset being monitored.

"Splunk ITSI has been a game-changer for our operations. The consolidated visibility and proactive monitoring has not only transformed our current state, but also set the stage for an enterprise-wide operation capability."

Key Challenges:
  • Lack of Visibility: a lack of visibility was hampering the efficient management and monitoring of assets.
  • Tool Sprawl: The use of multiple monitoring platforms had led to siloed data and operational inefficiencies, complicating the visibility of critical information.
  • Deficient Alerting & Incident Management: The absence of robust alerting and incident management workflows presented a significant operational challenge.
The Solution:

AC3 established an end-to-end observability strategy to monitor the health of Transurban’s Queensland ITS assets. The main dashboard provides a holistic view of the aggregated data, whilst ITSI glass tables drill down for detailed insights into the individual assets. This initiative resulted in real-time availability of service health and assigned business metrics for comprehensive KPI and service-level monitoring. The incorporation of AIOps capabilities played a pivotal role in minimising outages, and significantly reducing Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). Alerting capabilities were implemented to provide timely notifications of potential issues, and with the integration of Splunk ITSI with ServiceNow’s enhanced incident management capabilities, a seamless workflow for incident resolution is delivered.

"With Splunk ITSI, AC3 have empowered Transurban to revolutionise their operations, setting them on the path to establishing global visibility. The success of this implementation underscores our commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions for Observability and resilience."

The Outcome:

By leveraging the AI-driven capabilities of Splunk ITSI, the foundation has been laid for Transurban’s future state of enterprise-wide operational excellence. The transformative implementation has resulted in the following outcomes for Transurban:

  • Proactive Monitoring and Alerting: Realtime monitoring, coupled with proactive alerting, enables Transurban to address issues before they impact operations.
  • Minimised Outages with AIOps: By incorporating AIOps, outages are significantly minimised, enhancing the overall reliability and safety of Transurban’s assets.
  • Reduced MTTR: Prompt identification and resolution of issues has led to a substantial reduction in Mean Time To Resolution for network incidents.
  • Consolidated Monitoring Systems: Multiple monitoring systems have been successfully consolidated, simplifying the operational landscape.
  • Journey Towards Enterprise-Wide Operational Excellence: This initiative marked the beginning of Transurban’s journey towards establishing state-of-the-art visibility and operational capabilities.

Disclaimer: The work described in this success story was originally delivered by JDS Australia prior to its acquisition by AC3 in November 2024. The JDS team responsible for the success outlined here now forms part of the AC3 Group.