About Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration
The Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration aims to establish a friendly and effective public administration. Its mission is to improve government efficiency in the use of human, financial and material resources, and to ensure that know-how can be easily shared.
Challenge
The Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration wanted to continue to enhance its e-administration capabilities, and decided to migrate from NetWare® to a flexible, Linux-based operating system that would open up its options for the future.
As a government body, the Ministry is bound by strict guidelines around the stability and security of its IT systems. The organisation must also take care to choose solutions that provide cost-effective management, in order to ensure good value for money. These factors fed into the scoping exercise for the future infrastructure, as did the size, complexity and geographical extent of the existing solution: the Ministry has multiple locations around the country with a total of more than 500 centrally managed network printers and 100 servers.
It was also important to ensure a smooth migration path to the new platform, in order to minimise disruption to business services.
Novell Solution
The Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration outsources the management of its IT infrastructure to Astec d.o.o., a Novell Platinum PartnerSM. After reviewing various options with Astec, the Ministry opted to migrate its entire estate of more than 100 servers - half of them are running a mail system - from NetWare to Novell Open Enterprise Server running SUSE® Linux Enterprise.
"The Ministry wanted to maximise the compatibility with its previous environment during the migration phase, and Novell Open Enterprise Server was the ideal solution," said Davor Guttierrez, Senior Consultant at Astec. "After migrating to Novell Open Enterprise Server, we were able to move all existing services to Linux."
The new Linux-based infrastructure provides a complete set of file and print services to the Ministry's network of Windows-based workstations, at far lower cost than an equivalent solution based on servers running Windows. The Novell Open Enterprise Server environment serves thousands of users in dozens of office locations, providing appropriate access to documents and network resources according to each user's credentials.
"Migrating to Novell Open Enterprise Server running on Linux gave us continuity with our existing working practices plus the openness to innovate for the future," said Adrijano Slejko, Secretary and Head of Department, Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration. "The Novell solution builds a rich set of IT management and administration tools around Linux, helping us to combine low operational costs with a reliable and secure network. The high quality of work delivered by the Astec team - Davor Guttierrez, Denis Tomaševic and Ivan Janeš - helped us achieve a rapid return on our investment."
The Ministry uses Novell Cluster ServicesTM to ensure high availability for a number of mission-critical services, and Novell iMonitor to provide real-time network information and diagnostic tools.
"Novell Open Enterprise Server provides a number of tools that save time and effort," said Marko Crnigoj, Secretary and System Engineer, Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration. "With automated server updates that are invisible to users, our system administrators have more time to focus on delivering new and improved services."
Novell ZENworks® Configuration Management enables the Ministry to deploy software and updates to users from a central point of control, minimising effort and enabling rapid response to vendor security advisories.
Results
Migrating to Novell Open Enterprise Server running on SUSE Linux Enterprise enabled the Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration to combine the best features of its old infrastructure - including high security and low management costs - with the flexibility and openness of Linux.
"Linux opens up new opportunities for the future, enabling us to run on practically any server hardware we choose," said Robert Mandal, Undersecretary and System Engineer, Slovenian Ministry of Public Administration. "This means zero dependency on a specific hardware architecture or vendor, and lower long-term costs."
With the automated server and network management tools in Novell Open Enterprise Server, the Ministry can divert IT resources away from routine administration, and focus them instead on process optimisation. This ensures more efficient use of human resources and improved job satisfaction.
The use of Novell ZENworks Configuration Management simplifies and accelerates IT support, enabling almost all tasks to be accomplished remotely without the need to travel to offices in other parts of the country.
"We are highly satisfied with the solution, which help us to provide a stable and secure platform for the Ministry," said Slejko. "We look forward to continued success working with the Novell technologies."