smartOPTIMO GmbH & Co. KG is one of Germany's leading municipal utility company networks, providing solutions and business models for smart metering and digital customers. Since its foundation in 2009, 30 municipal utilities have already joined the company as shareholders. At smartOPTIMO, collaboration and rapid knowledge transfer are top priorities, as this ensures satisfied employees and smooth processes.

More functions, better performance: smartOPTIMO migrates its Atlassian solutions to the cloud
Overview of details
The customer
- smartOPTIMO
- www.smartoptimo.de
The requirements
- Jira and Confluence Server in the cloud
- Solving the bottleneck in user licensing
The solution
- Jira Software
- Jira Service Management
- Confluence
- Atlassian Guard Standard
Apps: - Extension for Jira Service Desk
- JSU Automation Suite for Jira Workflows
- My Requests Extension for Jira Service Management
The benefits
- Cost savings: no costs for server hosting and maintenance
- Greater transparency: visibility and control of all products and licenses in the Control Center enable more efficient scaling
- Seamless collaboration: optimized collaboration and process acceleration, for example when launching new solutions
To optimize both internal and external collaboration, smartOPTIMO has been relying on the proven Atlassian solutions for 8 years. Jira acts as a reliable ticketing system, while Confluence serves as a wiki and collaboration tool. These tools are seamlessly integrated into the company's PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) system. After experiencing server outages with their previous provider, the company decided to switch to the Atlassian cloud to take advantage of the latest features and innovations. The experts at catworkx are providing smartOPTIMO with expert support throughout the entire migration process to the cloud.
The switch to the cloud: more efficiency and security
In the past, smartOPTIMO ran its Atlassian solutions on-premises, which occasionally led to server failures and a great deal of time spent troubleshooting. These challenges made a change necessary. To benefit from modern features and unified processes such as single sign-on, smartOPTIMO decided to move to the cloud in 2022. The use of Atlassian Guard Standard through the connection to the Azure Directory in the cloud ensures increased security and precise access controls, which is of great importance for the company's business-critical content.
The cooperation with catworkx for a successful migration
The cloud migration, which began in October 2022 and was completed at the end of March 2023, was a carefully planned and closely coordinated project. smartOPTIMO worked intensively with catworkx. Together, they examined various options and ultimately decided on a direct switch to the cloud. The very good internal communication between the stakeholders proved to be a decisive factor for the successful implementation and acceptance of the project.
Almost seamless migration
Two successful test runs were carried out to minimize the impact on day-to-day operations. The instance was also renamed at short notice as part of the preparations. The actual migration took place over a weekend, meaning that the ticketing system was only unavailable for a day. The overwhelmingly positive feedback from both customers and employees confirmed the success of the implementation: everyone quickly found their way around the new environment.

We have now mapped 95 percent of the requirements that we had implemented in the server world in the cloud. At the same time, a whole range of new features and functions are now available to us. For example, there is a corresponding replacement in the cloud for almost every on-prem application. There are no more server failures and troubleshooting has improved significantly.
Conclusion
The migration to the cloud has enabled smartOPTIMO to collaborate more efficiently and communicate more securely. Customers and partners benefit from the improved processes and more stable IT infrastructure. The successful migration with the support of catworkx is an outstanding example of the possibilities offered by a modern, cloud-based IT environment. With this transformation, smartOPTIMO has not only laid the foundation for future innovations, but has also shown how a strategic technology change can significantly strengthen its own competitiveness.