Stralsund Municipal Utilities not only commit to basic provision but also deliver their services in a market- and customer-oriented way. Thus, it was essential to make the internal IT, particularly in the area of end-user computing, more efficient, secure, and available.
"So far, we have used a mix of different systems," reports Mirko Schulz, Infrastructure Architect at Stralsund Municipal Utilities. "We manage a large number of devices, including various notebooks, PCs, smartphones and tablets, as well as our GIS devices (Geographic Information Systems) and the specialized systems for reading our customers' meter readings. The administrative effort was enormous, particularly during the Corona times, when we had to ensure the secure operation of the home office workstations."
Anselm Drescher, Head of IT and Procurator, describes the discovery phase: "Mr. Schulz introduced me to the benefits of Workspace ONE. It sounded promising, but we knew we would need expert help to verify its validity. The team led by Mr. Hennig from comdivision gave us valuable tips during our initial discussions, leading us to conclude that we needed to conduct a Proof of Concept.".
"The focus was on availability, security, and user experience," recalls Jens Hennig, comdivision's Lead Architect, "so that we can also integrate other business areas of the customer in the future, the system had to be capable of handling multiple clients."
In the context of networking with the Hanseatic City of Stralsund and the digitization of schools, other systems like Univention were also considered during the PoC.
comdivision proposed a three-part solution:
1) To stream enterprise applications and ensure secure and easy access from the home office, a highly available VMware Horizon on-premises was implemented.
2) To provide "Modern Management" for all end devices used and manage them securely, as well as provide updates and native applications, Workspace UEM was used as a SaaS tenant.
3) Access to these applications (virtual, native, SaaS) was provided using context-based authentication and MFA, as well as a Universal App Store approach through Workspace ONE Access (SaaS).
"With the PoC, we demonstrated the secure connection of end devices such as home office workstations and GIS devices," Hennig explains. "The Workspace ONE Tunnel allows secure access to apps and internal websites without additional access data."
Schulz adds: "We limit network access to defined applications. Our engineers access our GIS databases with registered tablets via biometrics and multi-factor authentication."
"For Stralsund Municipal Utilities, we configured a kiosk mode for the reading devices with Workspace ONE UEM," Hennig continues. "Finally, as part of the PoC, we created a central application catalogue, integrated O365 and Horizon Apps, secured by multi-factor and context-based authentication."
