Energy Queensland puts eyes on its cloud, app estate

Energy Queensland is expanding its use of ThousandEyes to keep tabs on its statewide network infrastructure, and increasingly its application estate and cloud services.

Digital workplace and telco platform manager Justin McIntosh told last month’s Cisco Live conference in Melbourne that the company had started using ThousandEyes software about two years ago.

Initially, the adoption was driven by a desire to improve the reliability of ICT networks, with availability being key to enabling staff to work “efficiently and safely”.

“It was quite tactical usage - here’s a problem, here’s an incident, how can we use ThousandEyes to solve it,” McIntosh said. “We had some great initial wins there.”

McIntosh said that utilisation of the software had evolved in the past year, expanding the tool to monitor the statewide network and core sites, and beyond.

“The goal in the middle is getting ‘sensors’ on some of our key application users and key parts of our network, and tweaking tests to have a look at what’s important,” McIntosh said.

“That lets us move from being reactive to a little bit more proactive.”

McIntosh cited an example of an underperforming geospatial information system (GIS) platform that had “recently exited hypercare”, the immediate hands-on support period after go-live.

Using ThousandEyes, the state-owned electricity operator was “able to identify a hard-to-diagnose configuration error with our cloud DNS which dramatically improved the performance,” McIntosh said.

“[It meant we could] put some pressure on one of our SaaS providers to pull their socks up.”

The organisation is also utilising ThousandEyes to keep tabs on its Webex environment for videoconferencing and on Cisco Meraki wi-fi infrastructure at sites.

“We run something like 20,000 Webex meetings every month; the use cases range from executive and board through to toolbox talks out in the field, so it’s a very important part of our business and a very important tool to bring the business together,” McIntosh said.

“Having that assurance that Webex links and our network are running optimally is really important.”

McIntosh said the organisation planned to “continue to push [the] maturity” of its ThousandEyes usage, including using the tooling in its move to cloud.

“We’re on a cloud journey as well, so [it’s about] what we can do to better keep an eye on our cloud providers and provide that network assurance outside our network as well,” he said.

McIntosh predicted rising levels of digitisation generally in Energy Queensland.

“We’re a digital utility - we aspire to be one, [and] I think we very much are one now,” he said.

“What that means is in alignment with what we call electric life, the electrification of everything, I’d like to think that means the digitisation of everything as well. 

“So gone are the days of an electrician in a truck servicing our poles and wires network. As an example, they have an iPad which is as important as a screwdriver.”

McIntosh added that Energy Queensland’s technology roadmap, at a high level, “is about simplification of tools, alignment with strategic vendors, looking for value [and] single panes of glass.

“[It’s about] keeping it simple really - as simple as it can be in digital [today],” he said.

Energy Queensland claims to be "Australia’s largest, wholly government-owned electricity company", covering distribution businesses Energex and Ergon, retailer Ergon Energy Retail, and integrated energy solutions provider Yurika.