Stockholm Water

Success Story

Stockholm Water has migrated its water process control system to SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server. The Novell® operating system provides ultra-high availability and security for this business-critical application, which plays a key role in the provision of safe drinking water to the 1.2 million inhabitants of the Swedish capital city.

Overview

Stockholm Water is responsible for supplying the citizens and businesses of Stockholm with clean water for household and industrial purposes. The company operates a number of water processing and pumping stations, processing a total of around 14,000 cubic metres of water every hour, and is also responsible for maintaining the water mains.

Challenge

An early adopter of automation technology, Stockholm Water was using software from Cactus Automation, a Swedish specialist in Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) solutions for water treatment and other industries. This software was running on a proprietary UNIX* platform, and Stockholm Water wanted to upgrade to the latest version in the most cost-effective manner possible.

The goals of upgrading were to enable new functionality and take advantage of software improvements. Stockholm Water also wanted to ensure that its SCADA solution remained easy to service.

When choosing the new solution, Stockholm Water set two key criteria: reliability and security. The company provides an absolutely fundamental service to the households and businesses of Stockholm, and any interruption to service or degradation in water quality could have a very serious negative impact on these customers.

Novell Solution

"SUSE Linux Enterprise Server combines stability and security with excellent support from Novell – and the solution is also very cost-effective."

Jan Ekvall
Head of Water Production department
Stockholm Water

Based on the strength of its existing relationship with the vendor, Stockholm Water selected the latest Cactus CSX SCADA solution, choosing to run it on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell. Stockholm Water deployed the software with help from Cactus Automation and Novell, enabling a rapid and trouble-free migration.

The new architecture is based on a central server linked to thin-client devices – reducing administration costs in the remote water treatment plants while increasing security, as no data is stored locally. Stockholm Water was able to re-use a number of existing databases with the new software, minimising the effort and risk involved in the migration.

“Stockholm Water has an important responsibility to provide uninterrupted service to our customers, so we needed a stable operating system backed by a vendor that we could trust for support and updates,” said Jan Ekvall, Head of Water Production department at Stockholm Water. “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server combines stability and security with excellent support from Novell – and the solution is also very cost-effective. Cactus knows our business better than most suppliers, and their control and regulation expertise is second to none, so they were the ideal partners.”

In addition to supporting reliable day-to-day operations by keeping connections to key monitoring and control systems available at all times, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is helping Stockholm Water protect itself against viruses and other malware. AppArmor® is integrated into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and provides profile-based security for applications, defending against the exploitation of software flaws or compromised systems.

“Linux* is renowned for being both reliable and secure, which are very important attributes for this business-critical environment,” said Åke Bergström, Manager of Lovö Waterworks, Stockholm Water. “SUSE Linux Enterprise adds the open source AppArmor tool, making it easy for us to set and monitor security policies for even more robust defence against software exploits. This helps us to minimise the risk of downtime and ensure that our control systems work reliably 24/7 throughout the year.”

“More than one-third of Swedes receive their water from a plant controlled and supervised by a Cactus system,” said Fredrik Bergström, CEO, Cactus Automation. “We actively promote the use of Linux for our software, as it provides market-leading performance in operator interfaces, combined with attractive pricing and superb operational reliability.”

Results

"By switching to SUSE Linux Enterprise we have gained a stable, easy-to-manage platform for our most important systems."

Åke Bergström
Manager
Lovö Waterworks, Stockholm Water

Cactus CSX software running on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server helps Stockholm Water control the production of approximately 14,000 cubic metres of water every hour, ensuring that Stockholm has a reliable supply of clean water. The Novell solution combines high availability with strong security, providing optimal support for this business-critical application.

“The new solution from Cactus Automation and Novell improves our efficiency and enables much smoother operations,” said Ekvall. “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is highly reliable and requires very little administration on our part – it simply keeps working, which is exactly what we need.”

The deployment of SUSE Linux Enterprise has reduced IT administrative workload at Stockholm Water, providing intuitive tools to tune performance and manage updates, and keeping skilled IT staff free to focus on higher-value issues. This will help to minimise the long-term cost of ownership for the solution.

“By switching to SUSE Linux Enterprise we have gained a stable, easy-to-manage platform for our most important systems,” said Bergström. “The solution is also more cost-effective than our previous platform, and will significantly reduce our long-term IT costs.”