About Municipality of Epe
The Municipality of Epe is located in the Province of Gelderland, in the central-eastern part of the Netherlands. With about 33,000 citizens in four major towns and numerous villages, Epe is a thriving district set in beautiful countryside, and a popular destination for tourists.
Challenge
A quiet revolution is taking place among local authorities in the Netherlands, and the Municipality of Epe is leading the way. Rigidly defined services and paper-based administration are giving way to a more flexible approach to customer services, in which technology is set to play an increasing role.
Setting its sights on phasing out the traditional "one window, one product" approach to serving its citizens, the municipality looked to enable greater flexibility and responsiveness in the delivery of information. The challenge was to create an IT infrastructure that could easily adapt to meet unknown future demands while offering high stability, low costs and rapid implementation.
The municipality was running a variety of different platforms and lacked a single point of control over users and workstations. There were delays in integrating new systems and in servicing internal users, and IT staff were forced to focus on day-to-day maintenance rather than on creating innovative services for the public.
Novell Solution
Aiming to simplify its infrastructure and create a flexible environment for the future, the Municipality of Epe approached AAC Cosmos, a leading Dutch IT services provider. Taking into account the municipality's requirements for low cost of ownership, ease of management and future-proofing, AAC Cosmos recommended an open enterprise solution from Novell.
The heart of the new infrastructure is Novell Open Enterprise Server, which provides a suite of tightly integrated networking applications on top of SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server. Open Enterprise Server represented a fast-track to Linux, enabling the municipality to benefit from the platform's low cost of ownership and openness without dramatically changing existing procedures.
"We were convinced that an open infrastructure based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server would offer the ideal combination of flexibility, security, availability and low cost of ownership," said Bart van der Helm, Network Manager for the Municipality of Epe. "Novell Open Enterprise Server gave us an easy route to Linux, with additional tools and user-friendly interfaces that helped smooth the transition. Since we were the first local authority in the country to move completely to Linux, that was an important advantage."
With the new Linux infrastructure in place, the municipality turned its attention to resource management, selecting Novell ZENworks® to provide a single point of control for all client platforms. The IT team can now manage its entire estate of computers–whether based on Windows, Linux or NetWare®–using a standard set of tools, accelerating and reducing the costs of maintenance throughout the full lifecycle.
Epe chose Novell GroupWise® running on Linux for e-mail and shared calendaring. More than 220 employees use the software, which combines excellent ease of use with advanced security. "GroupWise offered the functionality we needed, with conformance to the most commonly used standards," said Han van Beek, Network Manager. "Its flexibility will enable us to develop our plans for mobile communication, extending services securely to remote users."
AAC Cosmos provided tailored on-site training services, helping the municipality to get up to speed with the new technologies quickly and effectively. "The training from AAC Cosmos was very professional and precisely focused," said van der Helm. "Novell and AAC Cosmos made a tremendous joint effort to deliver the entire solution without going over budget–we really value that level of commitment."
Results
The open source Novell infrastructure at the Municipality of Epe supports the organization's focus on better customer service, providing the flexibility and ease of management necessary to deliver new services quickly and efficiently. IT staff now work with a simplified, integrated and more reliable infrastructure, which gives them more time to focus on innovation, including the recent introduction of self-service public information points.
"With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, we have gained an enterprise-class operating system without being 'locked in' to a particular hardware vendor–giving us more flexibility for the future." said van der Helm. "The advanced networking services in Open Enterprise Server build upon this Linux foundation and will ensure an excellent level of service for our citizens."