42 minutes a month: the secret to unstoppable real-time traffic

For drivers, nothing is more frustrating than a navigation system that doesn’t work when you need it most. For automakers and fleet managers, service outages mean broken promises and financial penalties. A real-time traffic service must be just that: real-time, all the time, with no exceptions.

HERE Real-Time Traffic is built on a foundation of extreme reliability, designed to withstand failures and ensure continuous operation. This commitment is backed by a robust, fully redundant architecture and a dedicated global team that keeps the data flowing.

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Red light, green light

When your service provides live traffic information to millions of vehicles across 75 countries, there's no room for error. Automotive customers like BMW and Daimler rely on this data for their in-car navigation systems, and fleet and logistics companies depend on it for efficient "middle mile" routing.

These clients operate under strict service level agreements (SLAs), where even a few minutes of downtime can have significant consequences.

"We have a very strict SLA of 99.9% uptime," explained Peter Konar, Director of Engineering for HERE Traffic. "That allows us just 42 minutes of downtime per month. Period."

Meeting this demanding target needs more than just good software. The entire infrastructure—from applications and databases to networking—is designed with redundancy in mind. This "hot-hot" dual-site setup means two identical systems run in parallel, one in the US and one in Europe.

"We're always ready," said Joe Ciprian, Senior Product Manager for HERE Real-Time Traffic. "If we have an issue on one site, we can switch over quickly and smoothly."

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The ultimate pit crew

Failover isn’t a backup plan—it's a core operational strategy. HERE’s system is built to handle anything from a single node glitch to a memory leak without drivers ever noticing.

During one incident, a node failure caused the system to discard messages faster than it could accept them.

"We were able to gracefully restart nodes within our production system while maintaining a healthy state," said Konar. "Customers didn't notice most of the failovers that occurred in the background."

This level of stability is managed by a multi-tiered operational support team in Bangalore, India.

"These are the guys that are paying attention to every alarm that we have in the system," said Konar.

This Tier 1 team acts as the first line of defense, monitoring a dashboard of system health indicators 24/7. If they see a potential issue (visualized as a yellow or red warning on their monitors) they initiate a response based on detailed runbooks provided by the engineering team.

If the problem can't be resolved with a simple restart, the issue is escalated to the Tier 3 operations group, also in Bangalore. These system experts are empowered to make a critical decision—switch to the backup site—enabling a failover within minutes and ensuring the customer experiences no service interruption.

While the backup site handles the live traffic, the Tier 3 team, along with Tier 4 engineering experts, can diagnose and fix the issue on the now-inactive system without the pressure of a live outage. This process allows HERE to maintain its 99.9% uptime promise and learn from every incident to further strengthen the system.

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In the driver’s seat

Beyond technical resilience, what sets HERE Real-Time Traffic apart is its dedication to customer feedback.

"If you point out, 'Hey, there's a missing element in a message,' I want an alert for that," said Konar. "I need to know right away because it represents the voice of the customer coming back to me."

This customer-centric approach means the system is constantly evolving. New monitors and alerts are created based on real-world feedback, ensuring that what matters to customers is tracked and protected. This continuous improvement cycle has been refined over 15 years, building a wealth of knowledge into the platform's DNA.

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Leveling up

The architecture that powers HERE Real-Time Traffic today is also the launchpad for the innovations of tomorrow. As the automotive industry moves toward software-defined vehicles (SDV) and harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI), the need for reliable, real-time data will only grow.

Future premium features, like lane-level traffic detection or predictive road hazard alerts, will depend on this unwavering foundation. For example, AI algorithms can use sensor data from vehicles to identify slippery roads and automatically advise the car to slow down or even disengage self-driving features.

HERE is already using machine learning for its automated road work and closure detection systems, which analyzes real-time probe data to identify construction zones or closed roads that may have been missed.

While the potential of fully agentic AI is still on the horizon, its building blocks are being put in place today, promising a future where our navigation systems can proactively respond to customer queries and even predict issues before they happen.

Ultimately, whether it's through a robust redundant architecture or the next wave of AI-driven features, the goal remains the same: to provide a traffic service so reliable, you never have to think about it.