Case Study: ÖBB-IKT GmbH achieves scalable, secure, high-performance web infrastructure with Citrix NetScaler SDX

NetScaler SDX puts ÖBB on course for growth

ÖBB-IKT, the IT service provider for the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), needed to ensure that the group’s high-traffic website and mobile services—critical for timetables and e‑ticketing—remained fast, available and secure as usage grew. With millions of passengers and complex, geographically distributed backend systems, the challenge was to improve performance, protect against application-layer attacks, and add scalable, easy-to-manage infrastructure without disruptive hardware replacements.

Working with HTH Consulting, ÖBB upgraded to Citrix NetScaler SDX with NetScaler AppFirewall and TriScale licensing, deploying two SDX 11500 appliances in active-active mode across data centers. Caching, SSL offload, HTTP compression and TCP optimization cut dynamic page delivery from 1.1s to 0.1s, postponed a server refresh, and raised SSL transactions from 50K to 330K with up to 40 Gbps throughput. The virtualized architecture simplified management, hardened web application security, and provided pay-as-you-grow scaling to handle future demand.

ÖBB-IKT GmbH

Stefan Schultheis

Service Architect