Reference story - City of Enschede

“The city wanted stable systems and better support.”                                                       Tonny Lievers, Senior IT Consultant

The Challenge

Enschede's IT department's management of PCs and thin clients became unbearably time consuming during 2004, describes Tonny Lievers, one of the senior IT consultants working at the city council. The city has 1900 desktops, either full fledged PCs or thin clients, in several locations and uses in total some six hundred applications.

The city needed an efficient way to manage user environments and guarantee security. "The default Windows installation allows any user to change the system's configuration. The IT department was getting fed up with having to permanently prevent users from making accidental and deliberate changes."
The department also wanted to reduce the complexities of software distribution, as the city had grown to use more than a thousand different hardware configurations. A third issue to be resolved was to increase levels of user support. "The city council staff wanted stable systems and better support."

The IT department at first decided to use Citrix Presentation Server to lessen this complexity. However, ensuring users the right choice of applications and with the correct set of user rights proved to be quite complex, says Lievers. "There are many management tools that help with sorting out the many necessary Citrix scripts. Yet only RES PowerFuse and RES Wisdom makes this truly simple."

The Solution

RES PowerFuse enables Enschede's IT department to simplify the distribution of applications to either users working at thin clients or PCs. "It provides us with one harmonious interface to all system administration tasks", says Lievers. Most appreciated is RES PowerFuse's way to ease application distribution, printer management, directory services and geographic control over applications. IT Oost Nederland (HENGELO) was involved from the earliest beginning with specific knowledge and implementation support of both Citrix and RES PowerFuse.

When RES Wisdom was introduced to the market Enschede was an early adopter of this solution, also advised and supported by IT Oost Nederland (HENGELO). RES Wisdom simplifies the maintenance of software on PCs and servers. Enschede's IT staff likes how it helps them modify registry settings, monitor events, change services and install patches and hot fixes.

"When applications fail, RES Wisdom logs this. It helps us to debug systems and assist users. If a user calls the helpdesk because the use of a certain application is needed, this can be done on the fly. Users do not notice how much RES Software has changed their systems. However for the IT department PC and server maintenance has been made easy."

The Benefits

Using the RES Software solutions enables the city's IT staff to administer more than one hundred Citrix servers and more than four hundred fat clients with no more than four IT staff. Prior to using RES Software, the city had considered hiring extra IT staff to help in maintenance of the Citrix installation. "We figured we would need at least four more system administrators to provide the expected service. Now we need not hire any extra hands."

Using RES PowerFuse and an SBC-environment also made clear to the IT staff that several applications offered similar functionality, says Lievers. "We found we needed less software." Enschede reduced the number of applications some 30 percent. Lievers says RES makes the deployment of new Server Based software applications lightning fast. "If someone needs access to an existing application, it is done with a single call to the helpdesk." In just a few minutes the caller can start using the application, as the RES settings including user’s rights and other configurations. Removing an application is just as simple.

The Future

Enschede expects its IT-organization to become an IT service provider for the regional government. This means the city's IT department will evolve into a shared service centre, a process that will extend the responsibilities of Enschede's system administrators and change the way applications are delivered. Integration of the existing IT systems into one architecture that enables the support of several governmental organizations, secures work flow and allows information management will increase demands on availability and security, expects Lievers. "Management of these complex integrated IT systems will not be possible without the aid of advanced tools such as the RES Software management solutions."

Lievers anticipates RES Software will help the city to accommodate this change. It will be essential to this future organization that IT systems inter operate between independent organisations. "That would mean that some sort of delegation of control should be given to users outside the scope of ones own organization. We count on
RES Software to deliver that."

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