TRANSPARENT DATA TRANSMISSION FOR ACCURATE WEATHER FORECASTS

Since its inception in 2004, UBIMET has expanded as one of the largest private weather service providers in the world. Cisco helps UBIMET since 2012, to overcome many challenges, which are inevitable due to the vast distances between the several offices.

“For generating precise weather forecasts, a large quantity of data is required. Our headquarters in Vienna receives data from thousands of weather stations, lightning sensors, radar and satellite images from all around the world”, says Andreas Hedrich, Head of IT at UBIMET. This data is not only available for UBIMET’s technicians and meteorologists in Vienna, but also for the teams in Melbourne and New York. “We have integrated Cisco’s hardware in Vienna, including many servers, routers and firewalls, since 2012. Today, this is incorporated in all international projects including the weather services for the FIA. We provide weather data for every international Formula 1 race”, says Hedrich.

Cisco as one-stop-shop

Cisco’s unified computing architecture enables the optimal combination of server and network performance. It provides UBIMET solid operational and sophisticated software components. For the analysis and calculation of warning systems (e.g. severe weather warnings), the unified computing architecture provides a solid platform. “To provide innovative weather services, UBIMET requires the highest demand volume on its platforms,” says Achim Kaspar, General Manager for Cisco Austria and adds: “Cisco was able to provide the best infrastructure for these requirements. We are supporting UBIMET centrally from Vienna and on an international level with local teams in several countries and eco-partners.”

The advanced technology arising delights Andreas Hedrich: “The use of virtualization technologies offers significant advantages in terms of scalability and flexibility of our operating systems. At the same time, we achieve high availability – a key factor of our service model.” This significantly contributes to the creation of accurate weather forecasts and will also be important in the future. ”A further cooperation and partnership with UBIMET is equally important for us because UBIMET’s weather forecasts are very important for us and our customers”, says Kaspar.