All-American Publishing

Solution

The IT fleet consists of Windows clients, without an Active Directory domain set-up. In this scenario there are a couple of automated configuration tool options, but OpenText ZENworks Configuration Management for Unified Endpoint Management soon stood out as the most cost-effective solution. Benjamin had worked with OpenText ZENworks in previous roles and had implementation experience: “Having worked in environments without ZENworks, I’m staggered at the amount of resource waste and frustration I experienced trying to do a good job. As soon as you show an IT department what is possible using ZENworks, they can’t believe the efficiency gains.”

Having worked in environments without ZENworks, I’m staggered at the amount of resource waste and frustration I experienced trying to do a good job. As soon as you show an IT department what is possible using ZENworks, they can’t believe the efficiency gains.

ZENworks Configuration Management was implemented to manage close to 200 devices. These are managed both directly and by user identity. The direct devices are set up by department and standard bundles and policies are easily applied to manage upgrades or new machines. The devices managed by user identity typically belong to mobile users. Their policies, printer set-up etc. follow them. User identity device management is set up using job roles.

Creating a test environment through ZENworks Configuration Management has proved particularly useful. Benjamin describes a recent scenario: “One of our user’s computers died. Previously, this would have meant an outage of two days while we configured a replacement machine. With ZENworks we already had a replacement configured on our test bench. We used imaging bundles to deploy the relevant applications, and policies to configure the laptop appropriate for this user’s role. We also used ZENworks Endpoint Security Management to apply the correct security policies and the user was up and running again within an hour. A massive productivity gain.”

ZENworks really came into its own when All-American decided to open a satellite office. Management wondered if this office would need its own local IT staff and helpdesk, but using ZENworks Configuration Management, Benjamin and the team manage everything remotely. The set-up of the new office was easily done and the solution is fully scalable and ready to cope with further expansion.

An ongoing migration from Windows XP to Win7 and Win10 is also managed through ZENworks Configuration Management and Benjamin is very clear that these would be time-consuming and complex projects without the automation and standardization ZENworks has brought to All-American.

Results

Benjamin on the benefits: “ZENworks has given us an agility we didn’t have. As an IT department we were reactive and it felt like in constant firefighting mode. Now, our increased efficiency allows us to be much more proactive and think about how we add value for our users. We made changes to our helpdesk management which has transformed the perception of IT within  the company.”

He concludes: “The support from Micro Focus (now OpenText™) has been amazing. The ZENworks team is really responsive and has hands-on IT administration experience which means they completely understand where I’m coming from. We’re delighted with our results and look forward to deploying further parts of the ZENworks portfolio.”