School of System Management - baramundi new Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, located in the northwest of the Ruhr region near the Dutch border, has stuck to its concept of

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The new Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, located in the northwest of the Ruhr region near the Dutch border, has stuck to its concept of an innovative, interdisciplinary and international education for young people. Starting from the winter semester 2011/2012, the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences is offering a total of 20 bachelor’s and 3 master’s courses in four faculties,

“Life Sciences”, “Commu-nication and Environment”,

“Society and Economics” and “Technology and Bion-ics”, at its Kleve/Emmerich and Kamp-Linfort campus-es. The subjects covered at the Rhine-Waal Univer-sity of Applied Sciences are scientific, practical and internationally oriented. They are characterized by high quality teaching and research and their practical relevance. At the Rhine-Waal University for Applied Sciences, a total of 5,000 students from both Germany and abroad will take courses in the fields of Natural Sciences, Engineering, Social Sciences and Health Sciences. Around 70% of courses are taught in English and students of 40 different nationalities are now studying at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. This gives students opportunities for intercultural exchange and prepares them well for national and international job markets. The university’s international orientation is also emphasized by the addition of the English subheading “Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences” underneath the German name.

Networked campuses - even with radio relay The IT infrastructure of the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sci-ences stretches across the three campuses mentioned, which are networked with each other. One peculiar feature of this technology is a roughly 10 km long radio relay connection which connects the main Kleve campus to the Emmerich interim campus located on the other side of the Rhine. This campus-wide IT landscape currently includes around 600 clients. As the university was only founded in 2009, all its

IT equipment is up to date. Unlike many companies and institutions of its size who are currently waiting to migrate operating systems to Windows 7, this is not necessary here because the young university started with Windows 7 right at the outset. But the system management in its current stage of development is

rather high-maintenance. The campus-wide IT land-scape has to be managed centrally and there are now several network domains to support rather than just one as there was originally. The IT Services department with its ten employees based on the main Kleve campus are responsible for this. In late 2010 it was decided that the system management, which, up to this point, had been operated manually at great expense, should be organ-

ized more efficiently using an automated client management solution. The key factor here was not so much the constant effort of main-tenance, but rather the university-wide installation of an operating system and the time-consuming process of installing new clients for the first time.

Search for a suitable system management tool During its search for a suitable tool, the IT team evaluated both com-mercial and open source solutions. The latter category did not include any tools which would meet all of the university’s requirements, and out of the commercial offers it was baramundi Management Suite which ultimately came out on top. In the end, its user-friendliness was the deciding factor, as IT staff at the university will confirm.

This proprietary development by Augsburg-based baramundi soft-ware AG can handle tasks such as deploying software, installing op-erating systems and managing patches and inventories, to name but a few. With the baramundi Deploy, OS-Install, Patch Management, Inventory and Recovery components, the Rhine-Waal University of

School of System ManagementPublisher baramundi software AG Campus-wide system management at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences with baramundi Management Suite

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Applied Sciences has opted for traditional system management for the use of all essential and current tools.

The baramundi solution was implemented in about four days at the end of 2010 with on-site support provided by baramundi. The internal IT team was pleasantly surprised when the first client was installed after just one day of implementation. Thanks to baramundi Management Suite’s incredible ease of use, it was quick and easy to train the IT experts at the university.

The implementation process was completed according to plan and thus the solution came into proper use for campus-wide system man-agement at the start of the year as planned. Even just the installation of operating systems demonstrates that choosing an automated so-lution was the right thing to do, as Marcus Proest, Department Head of the Administrative Department for Information and Communication Technology, Planning and Organization at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, confirms: “The baramundi solution provides us with valuable assistance, especially with the installation of operating systems. At first we only used Windows 7 in the 32-bit version, but now we also deploy the 64-bit version, and both versions are avail-able in both German and English, so that makes four versions in total. Automation makes it possible to work more efficiently here.”

Integrated system and service management In organizations of this size, the central tasks of the IT department also include professional service management as well as system management. EcholoN is the university’s tool for providing a perfect user helpdesk service for employees and teaching staff and a hotline for students and guests. The ability to integrate baramundi Manage-ment Suite and the EcholoN® Service Management Suite from mIT solutions GmbH was crucial for the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. This solution’s main performance characteristics include the administration of user requests, errors and customer queries, user administration and customer and inventory administration.

A fully customized interface from EcholoN to baramundi allowed the two systems to be connected quickly and successfully. The installa-tion and set-up of EcholoN was completed within a week after the introduction of the baramundi solution.

Within this time frame, processes for incident, problem and asset management were mapped out. EcholoN uses the IT structure infor-mation provided by the baramundi software in line with the ITIL as Configuration Items (CI). In this way, baramundi serves as the basis for the service management that is in place. This combination covers all elements that are to have automated inventories. Other elements of the IT structure, such as active network components (switches, routers, WLAN), can be directly connected to EcholoN via SNMP for example.

IT staff can thus directly access saved inventory data, start a cor-responding job (e.g. software deployment) and execute further pro-cesses from within a process. IT staff do all of this work through an interface.

High-quality IT also ensures high-quality teaching So far all everyday system management tasks have been completed smoothly and efficiently using baramundi Management Suite. Its campus-wide use on several network domains works without any problems. If technical support from baramundi is needed at any point, the IT department receives immediate assistance from Support, and this works “exceptionally well” as IT expert Proest is keen to stress. This is reassuring for the IT team and good for the quality of the IT, which contributes to the equally high standards of teaching at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences.

Contactbaramundi software AGBeim Glaspalast 186153 Augsburg, Germany

Tel: +49 (821) 5 67 08 – 380 Email: [email protected]