References
Serendipity, Success and Security
Grazer Wechselseitige Versicherung AG
Reference
Based in Graz, Austria, GRAWE has been providing secure and high-quality insurance, banking and real estate services to customers in central, eastern and southern Europe since 1828. With more than 1,500 employees in 13 countries, GRAWE also has been using the baramundi Management Suite (bMS) unified endpoint management solution since 2003 to ensure that its 3,800 network endpoints are secure, reliable and up-to-date.
"We place very high demands on ourselves and have to prove our quality every day in customer interactions, so we need and expect a matching level of professionalism from our IT solutions providers," says Dr. Gernot Reiter, Deputy General Director and Head of IT at GRAWE. “That’s why we rely on baramundi for long-term IT and business success.”
Successful serendipity
"It was ultimately a coincidence that we came across baramundi," says GRAWE IT Administrator Andreas Lampel. Lampel and his team described their endpoint management challenges to baramundi and other vendors at the time and asked many tough questions. “I had my doubts as to whether any vendor could comprehensively address our needs,” Lampel says. “baramundi not only had convincing answers and solutions, they proved that they could deliver.”
Continuous security and IT efficiency through automation
Lampel says that the constant barrage of Microsoft patch releases required a lot of IT staff time and resources to manage manually, so they focused on getting a solution that could automate the process. "With baramundi Patch Management we found the right solution and can now determine how and when required patches are deployed. We no longer have to disrupt users with patch installations and network slowdowns during the workday,” says Lampel.
“We also use the integrated vulnerability scanning functions in bMS across all clients to determine which patches can be deployed immediately and which need to go through review and approval to avoid performance and incompatibility issues. That’s really valuable.” In addition to managing Windows updates, the IT team needed a better way to handle frequent and time-consuming updates to third-party software packages.
The baramundi Managed Software module enables us to automate the deployment and updating of commonly used software packages on thousands of endpoints.
Andreas Lampel, IT Administrator at GRAWE
Lampel and his team streamline both processes as well as the occasional software removal/uninstall using the rigorously tested scripts included in the Managed Software module. The module also gives IT staff detailed and continuously updated information about CVEs and required updates for software installed on users’ machines. Together, those capabilities help ensure endpoint security and smooth, trouble-free rollouts.
In addition to the pre-packaged scripts, the built-in “Release for Test” option makes it possible to test patches on a select group of endpoints before full deployment.
“With the Test option we get a good understanding how the patches behave and if they installed successfully. We release patches to all affected endpoints only if all tests were successful and did not cause any issues or side effects.”
The start of a long partnership
"baramundi has been with us now for about 20 years and has proven to be the right choice, not just for its product capabilities but also for its excellent support and collaboration with our team," says Lampel. "They are very responsive and always have an open ear for suggestions and new features requests. baramundi showed us that in addition to business benefits, genuine customer satisfaction is something that makes them really stand out.”
