Key Challenges
Continental Group IT wanted faster access to information and the ability to share it across teams — but manually collecting and analyzing data threatened to put the brakes on innovation.
Key Results
With Splunk, Continental Group IT now quickly gathers and shares information with stakeholders for faster innovation, heightened security and more resilient systems.
Since 1981, Continental AG (Continental) has collaborated with other suppliers and vehicle manufacturers to develop pioneering auto products for a global customer base.
To maintain success and keep operations running smoothly, Continental’s roughly 190,000 employees require timely information on which to base decisions. But getting team members the information they need — when and where they need it — proved challenging. With Splunk Enterprise, the IT teams now gather and distribute operational information efficiently, so any issues with equipment or processes are spotted before they slow down manufacturing.
Continental Group’s monitoring and analytics team helps IT services across the organization run smoothly by collecting logs, metrics and events and translating them into meaningful dashboards and reports, which service owners use to understand the state, health and availability of their various IT services.
Today, 300 gigabytes of data flow through Splunk Enterprise at Continental every day.
To ensure information reaches the right people at the right moment, the company worked with digital strategy specialist Bluecue to create a well-architected, individualized solution. Splunk partner Bluecue was key to Continental’s success and remains integral today, helping identify areas of potential and growth for the team. “Our Bluecue partners understand the large Continental architecture and work closely with our developers to implement use cases tailored to each IT service's needs,” Andra Blanariu, head of efficiency, says.
The Splunk platform helps us monitor performance for every machine and technology so we can pinpoint the root cause of an issue, fix problems faster and help people do their jobs better.
Continental Group’s IT team relies on diverse data sources and technologies to drive its complex operations across the globe. With Splunkbase, a repository of apps and tools that can be easily integrated with the Splunk platform, it’s easy to ingest any type of data and to integrate with third-party solutions. This enables the monitoring and analytics team to develop and deliver new apps to other teams just three to five days after they’re requested, in addition to providing other teams and stakeholders with the access they need to build their own tools.
The Splunk platform helps the Continental team research and develop manufacturing applications that provide windows into progress and improve efficiencies. “Using Splunk Enterprise, we can provide our stakeholders with useful tools so they understand how production is going,” Fernando Ulises Mérito del Campo says, head of big data and AI at Continental’s center of competence. His team focuses on predictive tools that spot problems before they slow down production while extending the life of equipment, increasing productivity and reducing resources and energy consumed during manufacturing. “The Splunk platform helps us monitor performance for every machine and technology so we can pinpoint the root cause of an issue, fix problems faster and help people do their jobs better.”
To innovate for the future, Mérito says, the company needs to understand its current state of operations — and data makes that possible. “Using Splunk Enterprise means we can access data from other systems throughout Continental, so it’s easier to make correlations and see where we can improve,” says Mérito.
Gabriel Topala, IT Advisor, Active Directory at Continental, also uses Splunk to help improve security and availability for the company’s critical infrastructure. “We’re responsible for about 800 servers, and we recently introduced hardware monitoring which allows us to see in a glance all systems that are either under maintenance or face hardware problems. Having insight into what’s happening across all our hardware and applications is crucial for us to ensure our systems stay resilient.”
Using Splunk Enterprise dashboards for a clear view into all activity, Active Directory staff from around the world can monitor systems 24/7. Gabriel Topala says, “Splunk Enterprise provides us with foundational information, such as space and time sync issues, CPU usage and network traffic. The Splunk platform also allows us to be more proactive, automatically detecting and correcting machine issues. Before, we’d receive tickets for issues only after a user had a problem, then we’d have to intervene manually.”
The team is now also able to immediately address any potential security vulnerabilities through Splunk alerts, which allows Continental to maintain integrity of its systems.
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