"We are happy that we no longer need to switch back and forth between Microsoft Management Console, iManager and ConsoleOne to manage user identities in our Novell and Microsoft systems. eControl provides a unified identity management solution that saves valuable administrator time, reduces administration complexity and keeps all our systems and modifications under control."

Overview

The University Hospital of Würzburg consists of four integrated clinical institutes that comprise 19 hospitals with 87 units and 8 intensive care units. In addition, the University Hospital is affiliated with six vocational healthcare schools (nursing, pediatric nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy, dieticians and massage). Each year, approximately 50,000 patients receive medical treatment in the facility and 180,000 receive out-patient care.

To deliver this level of healthcare, the University Hospital of Würzburg uses multiple IT applications across distributed Microsoft and Novell networks. The Hospital's Medical Informatics Service Centre includes 50 staff members who are resonsible for management and supervision, network equipment, systems, SAP administration processes, SAP clinical processes, and other service and support activities. All of these employees are part of the helpdesk team. Two employees take care of user administration for approximately 5,000 IT workplaces that are used by 6,000 staff.

The University Hospital of Würzburg implemented eControl from Omni to centrally manage a large number of user identities and accounts. eControl has replaced Microsoft Management Console, iManager and ConsoleOne for managing user accounts across mixed and multiple Microsoft and Novell networks from a single web-based interface, accessible from any browser. Account updates can be carried out quickly and easily by front-line staff who have very little technical knowledge of Microsoft or Novell systems. The network also includes managed systems such as Siemens DirX (telephony system) and several SAP systems (SAP-HR, SAP-KIS, SAP-BW).

The Challenge

Using Microsoft Management Console, iManager and ConsoleOne to manage more than 6,000 user accounts across diverse systems and with a large number of possible attributes and properties was a time-consuming task. The University Hospital of Würzburg needed a unified interface that delivered centralised role-based administration across all systems.

"With eControl, we finally have a unified, cross-platform management tool that allows us to make individual or bulk changes in our systems without losing any of the functionality of the native administration applications," said Andreas Thiele, Assistant Director of Systems, Identity Management and Infrastructure at the University Hospital of Würzburg. "eControl provides role-based access to all our Microsoft and Novell accounts and attributes without having to give users any administrator rights or access to complex tools."

"Naturally, security plays an important role at any University Hospital. eControl satisfies all our security rules and requirements," continued Mr. Thiele. "eControl's Audit and Reporting, in fact, provides a full audit log of all changes made in our systems for administrator oversight."

The Solution

The University Hospital of Würzburg uses the following eControl modules for centralised, role-based Identity Management for its Microsoft and Novell systems:

The Results

"After we began searching for a unified identity management solution, our IT partner, Maintainet AG, made us aware of eControl," said Mr. Thiele. "We implemented eControl on our own without any problems," continued Mr. Thiele. "We leveraged existing hardware and no programming was required to complete the implementation. User adoption and satisfaction have been very good because minimal to no training is required for front-line staff. Although we have not directly measured the savings of eControl, it is evident that even after a short time, the time savings are significant through eControl's centralised identity management and its Web 2.0 interface and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) access. "We are happy that we no longer need to switch back and forth between Microsoft Management Console, iManager and ConsoleOne to manage user identities in our Novell and Microsoft systems. eControl provides a unified identity management solution that saves valuable administrator time, reduces administration complexity and keeps all our systems and modifications under control." "With the implementation of eControl, it is now possible to delegate administration tasks, which was very complex using the old tools," stated Mr. Thiele.