The future of rail is digital. We are paving the way.

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DB Systel

Shaping successful digitalisation at Deutsche Bahn

Article: The future of rail is digital. We are paving the way.

DB Systel GmbH, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, is a wholly owned subsidiary of DB AG and the driver of digitalisation for all Group companies.

Digitalisation is the key factor in ensuring DB's future success. We are paving the way. Together with all of Deutsche Bahn's business units and always in close partnership, we are opening up new paths in the overall rail system to advance the digitalisation of business processes and holistic digital solutions. We have established a comprehensive range of services that meet the highest IT standards and requirements with the aim of creating excellent customer experiences with strong customer value. We utilise the potential of the market in our digital services. Our strategic partnerships are an important building block in our ability to respond flexibly to customer wishes and individual Group requirements. At the same time, we are focusing on rail-specific solutions, strengthening digital maturity and digitalisation capabilities across the Group, thus ensuring effectiveness and efficiency. Sustainability in and through digitalisation is also becoming increasingly important as part of DB's general alignment. In pursuit of this goal, we contribute extensive rail and IT expertise and operate in a vendor-neutral way so that we can all reach our common goal. Over 7,000 people are currently employed at our main locations in Frankfurt, Berlin and Erfurt.

Early recognition of market trends

We constantly pursue innovative ideas and promising solutions to help DB progress. In the search for new ways forward, we have our own business ventures and open data platforms, and we run Skydeck, DB Systel's in-house innovation lab. We are also active on the external market with selected services and products. Our Digital Trend Radar regularly provides relevant insights into the trends of tomorrow. We develop and assess new and evolving digital technologies and trends so that we can make a genuinely effective contribution to the overall rail system. We create access to expertise, data, services and innovations by means of industry-wide, interdisciplinary networks while also promoting our own innovative developments.

Achieving more together in the agile working world

We need modern, flexible organisational structures to cope with the constant changes brought about by the steady stream of new requirements. The digital future of rail cannot succeed without them. With this in mind, we design and promote effective forms of organisation and interlinked value creation between business and IT. Agile, autonomous teams and company-wide networks characterise this new world of work. This creates a common focus for variable requirements.

Here are a few facts: 

  • Cloud First: Over 450 processes and services migrated to the Deutsche Bahn cloud; over 535 terabytes of storage built into the cloud; flexible use of 7,000 - 15,000 virtual servers in the cloud
  • DevOps: More than 120 teams with end-to-end responsibility for IT services
  • Innovation hub: More than 89 business ideas conceived in the Skydeck; more than 500 guests per month participating in innovation events
  • Workplace: Over 10,000,000 e-mails checked for spam each month; 330,000 end-user devices managed and 114,000 workstations digitally equipped
  • Employees: More than 7,000 employees from 101 different countries; high percentage of female employees (25.7%) when compared with the German IT sector1 (approx. 17%)


(1Percentage of female employees in the IT sector (absolute and percentage values) for selected countries (sources for Female Tech Workforce EU Countries: Eurostat 2019a) Eurostat (2019a): available online at http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction.do (last update: 13 July 2021)