An early adopter of ZENworks® Configuration Management strengthens its partnership with Micro Focus®.
The main task of Agrarmarkt Austria (AMA) is the handling of assistance measures in agricultural policy. AMA Marketing Ges.m.b.H. (specific business division) is responsible for the definition and implementation of various quality assurance programs and to promote the sale of Austrian agricultural products. This includes meat and meat products, eggs and meat poultry, milk and milk products, fruit, vegetables and potatoes.
Challenge
AMA’s IT organisation manages the roll-out of office suite applications, as well as Oracle and SAP modules, and custom-developed applications for AMA users.
As a long-time user of Novell solutions, when AMA realised years ago that distributing new software versions to its users was becoming a time-consuming task, Gerhard Dyduch, IT-Manager Infrastructure at AMA, naturally looked to Micro Focus (having acquired Novell) for a potential solution, as he explains:
“We had always been happy with our Novell solutions and the support we received. We’d heard good things about ZENworks Configuration Management, which had only just been introduced at the time, and we decided to evaluate and eventually implement it.”
Solution
ZENworks Configuration Management (ZCM) automates IT management processes across the lifecycles of desktops, laptops, and mobile devices.
With the help of a specialist implementation partner, AMA was soon underway with ZENworks Configuration Management and has never looked back; upgrading as new versions became available.
Mr Dyduch likes the fact that ZENworks Configuration Management was able to adapt as AMA’s IT environment and requirements increased:
“We run ZENworks Configuration Management on a VMware virtual server. ZENworks’s flexibility enabled us to easily migrate to an Active Directory when that became relevant for us, without having to run this as a separate configuration management project.”
Using ZENworks Configuration Management, AMA can offer controlled deployment of all its applications on either Windows 7 or Windows 10, depending on the specific user’s current platform. This is very important because new application versions become available faster and faster. Mr Dyduch comments:
“Our users like the fact that they can use their familiar interface, which groups applications in a desktop window, to easily download any new software versions to ensure they are always current and don’t experience any downtime. Our IT staff can use ZENwork´s functions to quickly deploy new software versions to nearly 750 PCs across our organisation.”
Results
Mr Dyduch is clear on the benefits:
“It would clearly not be practical for every user to install new software versions themselves, or for our IT staff to spend their time doing this on behalf of users. We estimate using ZENworks Configuration Management we can distribute new
software versions five times faster than through a manual effort.”
He concludes:
“ZCM is easy to work with and has a clear central administration console. Throughout our long partnership we have felt supported by Micro Focus and look forward to taking advantage of new functionality as it is introduced.”
This article was first published in OHM Issue 38 (2017/3), p23.