Over 100 institutions including 24 hospital locations with over 6,200 beds, 35 residential and care homes with over 3,000 care beds across Germany belong to the AGAPLESION health group. Over 19,000 employees care for over a million patients and residents with customer-led medicine and care to recognised quality standards. By networking the institutions with each other and with external partners, AGAPLESION offers full care across sectoral limits in the health service at virtually all of its locations.
Our data is available quickly and comprehensively with Deskcenter Management Suite. We know exactly what is in use where.
Martin Klum
Licence Manager, Central Services IT, AGAPLASION gAG
Question: How do you use Deskcenter Management Suite at AGAPLESION, Mr. Klum?
Martin Klum: “We have worked with Deskcenter Management Suite in a targeted way since 2015. Although previously we had an overview of the IT systems in use in our heterogeneous system environment, that was not the case for the systems requiring licences. We now manage around 14,000 systems and 2,200 components – basically everything that has a Windows operating system. We also record hand scanners for medical requirements and multifunctional systems that require licences as well as active network components.”
Question: Why was it important to address these problems?
Martin Klum: “Our goal was to create concurrence in software licence management. So that we can properly respond to and monitor business requests and day-to-day business: software procurement, software management and hardware management in one system. This has the advantage of all information being directly available during a SAM audit. Subsidiary to this is the SAM certificate which no longer requires proof for the procurement process and Deskcenter.”
Challenge
- Compliance for all IT systems used and the licenses installed on them
- Networking of more than 100 institutions troughout Germany
Solution
- Complication-free transfer of finance data and import by script from all systems, which were not in the Active Directory
- Illustration of the group-wide IT infrastructure
- Microsoft SAM certification
Question: What was the technical challenge, e.g. special infrastructure features at AGAPLESION?
Martin Klum: “Due to our Germany-wide representation, with low bandwidth branches connected to our network, we decided to install Deskcenter locally on site.
Of course, we have a central data center in Frankfurt that gives us access to every location. But if you only have a small connection, let’s say a 2Mbit line in one location, then it is difficult to transfer data permanently from there. That’s why we decided to localize the database locally reproach. So we can connect directly from the data center with the database or from there the Retrieve data – a key advantage of Deskcenter, which can’t be provided by any other solution.”
Question: What criteria did you use for evaluation?
Martin Klum: “On the one hand we required agent-free inventorisation of the hardware and software as well as comprehensive hardware and software asset management. On the other, reporting on the IT assets and comprehensive and easily managed lifecycle management was also extremely important. We were also looking for a flexible partner at our side who could handle special customer requests. We were able to meet all these requirements with Deskcenter.”
Question: How has using Deskcenter Management Suite made things easier for you at AGAPLESION?
Martin Klum: “The whole project– installing Deskcenter Management Suite via special customisations, entering commercial data and importing from all systems using scripts that were not in the Active Directory and required licences– was completed without complications. Microsoft SAM certification started in December 2015. Our software procurement process has been implemented successfully which saves a lot of time and creates transparency. We depict the complete IT infrastructure of the AGAPLESION Group with Deskcenter Management Suite. All of the relevant information is available within the shortest possible time. This significantly simplifies the IT planning and administration.”