Lutz Berger, Head of Technical Services, and five other employees are responsible for the smooth running of information technology behind the scenes at the utility company. And it was precisely this IT team, which is responsible for the IT needs of both the municipal utilities and Weimar's municipal economy, that was unpleasantly surprised in the fall of 2010. At the end of the year, a large IT service provider terminated the management of around 140 client PCs at Stadtwerke Weimar and Stadtwirtschaft Weimar. "We were suddenly faced with the unexpected task of having to put our client management on a new footing as quickly as possible," recalls Lutz Berger. "So, together with our IT partner controlnet, we looked for ways to replace the old software distribution of the former service provider with modern client management software."

Legacy product, open source or integrated suite

As time was of the essence, Stadtwerke Weimar focused on evaluating three alternatives: Firstly, they examined the takeover and continuation of the Netinstall software from enteo used by the old IT service provider; secondly, the free open source product OPSI was shortlisted. As a third alternative, the partner controlnet brought the acmp suite from aagon GmbH into play, which it had already used successfully in other projects.

"The high license costs and the fact that it was purely a software distribution system were arguments against Netinstall at the time. With OPSI, we would have saved the license fees, but adapting the software to our environment would have been very time-consuming and therefore also very expensive," explains Lutz Berger. "That's why we opted for the acmp suite from aagon GmbH at the beginning of December, which offered the best price-performance ratio for our specific selection criteria."

In addition to a clear user interface, the integration of license management and a helpdesk as well as the execution of scripts on the administered PCs, these criteria also included two other key points: the multi-client capability of the system and detailed rights management for different administrator groups. Stadtwerke Weimar also wanted to be supported by an external service provider in the operation of the new solution.

The so-called bidirectional operating concept envisaged that the specialists from controlnet would take over the packaging of software as well as the preparation of operating systems and drivers for installation on new hardware. The IT managers at the municipal utilities, on the other hand, will then install the prepared operating systems on new PCs on site and distribute the packaged software to their colleagues' PCs.

Installation under time pressure

In order to provide Stadtwerke Weimar with a functioning client management system as quickly as possible, controlnet and a consultant from aagon began installing the acmpServer in the Stadtwerke data center in December. At the same time, the service provider took care of the creation of around 25 software packages for later distribution. These included packages for the usual office applications as well as the ERP systems for supply and disposal and the city's geographical information system. "We were faced with the major challenge of implementing around 75 percent of the functions within a maximum of four weeks," recalls René Fiehl, Managing Director at controlnet. "We were glad that we received such good support from the manufacturer as a certified aagon partner."

Helpdesk, license management, office migration

Once acmp went live in January 2011, Stadtwerke Weimar immediately launched the following sub-projects. Next on the agenda was the introduction of the helpdesk integrated into acmp. Since April of that year, all Stadtwerke and Stadtwirtschaft employees have been able to record problems with hardware, software and other IT systems at their workstations using a special support form. Pre-qualification of the tickets by means of corresponding questions in the form makes it easier for the IT specialists at Stadtwerke to subsequently process the inquiries.

"Above all, the helpdesk from aagon has provided us with structured support processes and important information about the causes of faults," explains Lutz Berger. "For example, we can now use the statistics from the acmp helpdesk to evaluate at any time which systems are causing the most problems and thus take proactive countermeasures." Stadtwerke Weimar also receives support from its partner controlnet.

This is because the municipal utilities' IT staff provide first-level support on site, while controlnet takes care of second-level user support.

Other milestones in the acmp project in 2011 included the implementation of a license management system. Among other things, this enables Stadtwerke to create the annual report on the Microsoft client and server products used with just a few mouse clicks from the inventory data and stored license information.

Finally, in August of this year, Stadtwerke Weimar successfully migrated its entire Office environment to the current 2010 version with the help of acmp. The migration of all PC workstations to Windows 7 is already planned for 2012 or 2013 - also with the help of the acmp suite, of course.

About Stadtwerke Weimar

Stadtwerke Weimar has been supplying around 60,000 Weimar residents with electricity, gas and heat for over 25 years. The successful products WeimarGas/WeimarGas Öko and WeimarStrom/WeimarStrom Öko make a decisive contribution to environmental protection in and around Weimar.

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