2 page Case Study - Posted 7/2/2007

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Legoland Deutschland

Theme Park Makes IT Management a Smooth Ride with Powerful New Tool Set

Theme park LEGOLAND® Deutschland must ensure its IT systems run smoothly at all times to give 1.3 million visitors each year the best possible experience. The powerful and affordable Microsoft® System Center Essentials 2007 allows technology staff to see how individual systems contribute to business processes and to manage issues before they become serious problems. IT staff now have more time to help improve the business.

Business Needs

LEGOLAND Deutschland is a theme park at Günzburg, between Stuttgart and Munich, in Bavaria, Germany. It receives around 1.3 million visitors each year. Targeted at families with children between three and thirteen years old, the park and its MINILAND area offer a unique attraction: LEGO® models constructed from more than 50 million LEGO bricks. The park also has eight theme areas that feature roller coasters, action rides, water attractions, shows, restaurants, and stores.

With Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007, we can monitor entire processes that affect lots of different areas across the business and depend on many different IT systems. Günter Schwarz IT Manager, LEGOLAND® Deutschland

“The moment the IT systems go down, the park goes down as well,” says Tim DeYoung, Director of Business Support for LEGOLAND Deutschland. “We can’t sell tickets or process anyone’s bills in the restaurants. The whole business goes into manual mode, which makes everything extremely difficult.”

The park’s IT department of six manages approximately 250 computers (140 point-of-sale terminals and 110 administrative desktop PCs) and approximately 30 servers.

“When you buy your ticket, the transaction needs to be quick,” says Günter Schwarz, IT Manager for LEGOLAND Deutschland. “If the point-of-sale terminals aren’t up to speed because the database isn’t getting the performance we expect, we need to know about it fast. This helps us ensure our operations are seamless for our colleagues and customers.”

To maintain this level of service, LEGOLAND Deutschland wanted a system that would monitor the health of its IT systems and allow it to spot the warning signs before a problem led to a serious outage.

“We needed to be proactive and stop problems before the end users noticed there was an issue,” says Schwarz. “However, the high-end tools with the functionality we wanted were out of our price range.”

Solution

LEGOLAND Deutschland participated in the Rapid Deployment Program for Microsoft® System Center Essentials 2007 with help from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Cellent AG, its long-term technology supplier.

“System Center Essentials is designed for midsized environments and provides an excellent level of functionality,” says Yannick Zöller, IT Professional at Cellent. “It helps IT managers regain control of their environments by providing software rollouts, application updates, and server monitoring.”

Cellent and LEGOLAND Deutschland implemented the software in May 2007. The rollout took three days, with an additional two days to train the company’s six IT staff.

LEGOLAND Deutschland now uses System Center Essentials to monitor the health of 30 servers, 20 computers, 13 electronic turnstiles, and 140 point-of-sale systems. The servers include an online store based on Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 and Internet Information Services 6.0 where customers can book tickets and purchase LEGO and other merchandise.

“Our previous system would tell us if a whole server was running or not, but we needed a higher level of granularity,” says Schwarz. “We needed to know if particular services on each server and across multiple systems, messaging, for example, were running and how they were performing.”

System Center Essentials is a major building block for LEGOLAND Deutschland’s adoption of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards for technology service delivery.

“We are implementing ITIL, so we’re very process oriented,” says Schwarz. “With Microsoft System Center Essentials 2007, we can monitor entire processes that affect lots of different areas across the business and depend on many different IT systems. For example, we have set up a group called ‘ticketing’ that covers the network, the database, the point-of-sale systems, and the turnstiles.”

Benefits

The implementation of System Center Essentials has given LEGOLAND Deutschland a powerful and affordable tool set and has allowed the company to monitor system health and quickly identify the causes of problems. This leaves IT staff more time to support the business.

• Systems run smoothly. System Center Essentials gives LEGOLAND Deutschland the ability to monitor services and understand how they contribute to entire business processes. The system helps IT staff be more productive and effective and address issues proactively. “We don’t have to search for the source of problems, we can quickly get to the root cause and correct it,” says DeYoung.
  
  
• Customized dashboards. System Center Essentials allows IT staff to create customized dashboard interfaces that aggregate data from multiple systems. “If you have 30 servers and 250 PCs to look after, you can’t just have a list,” says Schwarz. “Dashboards give you a quick overview of all the systems at a glance—it’s a very clever product.”
  
  
• Significant timesavings. With much of the manual server monitoring and administration work now automated, IT staff can focus on supporting the business. “We have saved around 12 hours per month on server administration,” says Schwarz. “System Center Essentials generates daily reports on system health, which have reduced the time spent troubleshooting server and application problems from two days a week to around half a day.”
  
  
• A cost-effective solution. System Center Essentials is specifically designed for mid-sized businesses with up to 500 computers and 30 servers and provides a cost-effective solution that allows LEGOLAND Deutschland staff to proactively manage IT systems. “System Center Essentials gives us an optimal mix of the functionality we need and the simplicity to administer our systems effectively,” says DeYoung. “And of course it also fits our limited IT budget.”