Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. Kg, known worldwide for its chocolate brand RITTER SPORT, is using the baramundi Management Suite for the integrated management of its IT infrastructure. With the modularly built, high-performance and flexible endpoint management software by baramundi, the IT department is tackling a wide range of tasks: From creating inventories, operating-system installation, and software deployment through to updating third-party software and installing Microsoft patches.
Michael Jany, Network and System Administrator at Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG, explains: “For us, a considerable criterion for selecting baramundi software was the fact that it could be integrated without any difficulty into our existing system landscape. In fact, the integration ran smoothly and within a single work day.” The IT professional, who is responsible along with his colleagues for managing a total of 800 clients as well as 200 thin clients, adds: “The Management Suite runs unfailingly and is self-supporting. The solution certainly makes our everyday work considerably easier. We save a huge amount of time, especially when updating third-party software and distributing software patches.”
Standardized installation of operating systems and software
In order to keep clients streamlined, each client that is newly incorporated into the environment is initially set to zero. IT managers install the operating systems with the baramundi Management Suite fully automatically and with a native Microsoft installation method, which ensures an orderly procedure.
Suitable drivers are assigned automatically through automatic hardware detection. At the moment, 150 so-called jobs are running for deploying applications such as Java, Office Suite and VLC-Player. Here, upon the initial setup procedure, a fast and automated installation process is also executed. If an application must be removed again, this also takes place natively. The deployment of a self-service kiosk is already in progress.
Updating third-party software and integrating patches
Due to ever shorter update cycles and the multitude of applications, tasks such as testing, packaging, and rolling out updates take up a lot of time – and speed is in demand, as otherwise, critical security gaps make the IT infrastructure an easy victim for attacks. By using the baramundi Management Suite, Michael Jany and his team profit from noticeable time savings and benefits for security and comfort for patch management.
All patches and updates are packetized and tested beforehand by baramundi. Only then will these be made available to the customer for immediate deployment. In addition, all computers at Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG will continuously be checked with a vulnerability scan for possible security gaps. If patches are missing, Michael Jany and his team define whether the patches are able to be automatically incorporated or whether manual approval is necessary. On Microsoft’s “Patch Tuesday”, baramundi always provides an updated and a pre-controlled patch database.
Windows 10
A Windows 10 test environment is currently running extensive tests before deployment at Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG. As soon as this is completed, migration to the new operating system with the baramundi solution will begin. From 2018, all clients in the Alfred Ritter IT landscape are planned to run exclusively on Windows 10.
