Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

Customer Solution Case Study

City Council Supports E-Government Services

and Enhances Operational Efficiency

Overview “It is no longer necessary for administrators to walk

Country or Region: Germany
Industry: Local Government
through buildings or travel to outlying offices when
computer problems arise. As a result, we have
Customer Profile
Wolfsburg is the sixth largest city in Lower
reduced our workloads significantly.”
Saxony and the home of Volkswagen cars. Wolfgang Beuermann, IT Manager, Wolfsburg City Council
The Wolfsburg City Council delivers a range
of public services to 122,000 local
citizens. Wolfsburg City Council delivers a range of public services to around
122,000 local people. To enhance relationships with citizens, it
Business Situation
The council is building an e-government decided to develop a new online portal for e-government services,
portal to enhance public service delivery.
but this could not be deployed effectively on the council’s ageing IT
To achieve this, and streamline IT
management, it needed to update its infrastructure. To address this issue, Wolfsburg City Council
ageing technology infrastructure.
deployed the Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 enterprise
Solution operating system and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 messaging
A new IT system based on the Microsoft®
environment. These technologies were selected in favour of Linux
Windows Server™ 2003 enterprise
operating system and Microsoft Exchange open source software alternatives, based on their centralised
Server 2003 messaging environment.
management features, ease of integration with existing
Benefits infrastructure, and cost-effectiveness. Wolfsburg City Council IT
 Reduced IT management costs.
employees now manage workstations, user accounts, and
 Time savings for IT employees.
 Enhanced security. applications centrally. As a result, they have enhanced network
 Support for future IT projects.
security, achieved significant time savings, and reduced
 Full integration with e-government
portal. operational costs.

“The aim of the project
was to form closer
relationships with our
citizens, improve service
delivery, and operate
more cost-effectively.”
Wolfgang Beuermann, IT Manager, Wolfsburg
City Council
Situation
On May 26, 1938, Ferdinand Porsche
founded the Volkswagen plant on the north
side of the Mittelland Canal in Wolfsburg,
Germany, and a new city was built to house
the required workforce. Today, the city is the
sixth largest in Lower Saxony with around
122,000 inhabitants, 50,000 of whom still
work at the Volkswagen facility. Wolfsburg
offers a number of tourist attractions,
including the ‘Autostadt,’ a complex that
offers visitors state-of-the-art technology and
experiences related to the automobile. A
large number of research institutions also
have their headquarters in the city.
Wolfsburg City Council delivers a range of
public services to local citizens. To improve
the effectiveness of these services, it decided
to deploy a new e-government portal early in
2005. Wolfgang Beuermann, IT Manager,
Wolfsburg City Council, says: “The aim of the
project was to form closer relationships with
our citizens, improve service delivery, and
operate more cost-effectively. More
specifically, we wanted to give citizens simple
ways to print-out forms, obtain information
about the public register, order new refuse
bins, register their vehicles, and submit
planning applications online.”
To achieve these goals, Wolfsburg City
Council needed to upgrade its ageing IT
infrastructure, which was based on
Microsoft® Windows NT® Server 4.0 and
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5. The city also
had 180 applications and data was
administered in a variety of unconnected
systems. Beuermann says: “This disparate
infrastructure made administration very
costly. We needed new technology for
centralised administration of our e-mail
platform, groupware environment, and new e-
government portal.”
Solution
After evaluating competing solutions,
including the Linux open source operating
system, Microsoft Windows Server® 2003
was chosen as the council’s new server-side
operating system. At the same time, the e-
mail environment was migrated to Microsoft
Exchange Server 2003. Modernisation of the
infrastructure began in February 2005 and
was completed in September 2005.
Beuermann says: “Switching to Linux would
have increased staff training requirements. In
addition, it would have been necessary to
migrate roughly 180 Microsoft-supported
applications to the new operating system and
reintegrate many of them with our existing
Microsoft Windows® XP Professional desktop
operating system and Microsoft Office
System applications. As a result, deploying
Linux would have been a far more expensive
proposition.”
User administration can now be carried out
centrally using Active Directory®. This
technology offers rapid, reliable data
replication across the Wolfsburg City Council
network. It features a single point of
administration for all resources, including
files, peripheral appliances, databases, Web
access points, host connections, users, and
groups. Administrators can apply changes
centrally, with Active Directory ensuring that
updates are automatically installed on all
workstation computers.
Microsoft Services provided support for the
technology implementation. After a three-
month conception phase, extensive tests
were carried out by the IT department before
deployment in the live environment.
Beuermann says: “We ran extensive tests
prior to implementation and encountered no
major problems. We were then able to
integrate the new infrastructure quickly and
cost-effectively with the new SAP-based e-
government portal and migrate our internal
 departments to the new system in just three
weeks.”
Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server
2003 are used to administer the municipal
administration’s 1,600 workstations.
Employees now have direct access to the
SAP-based e-government portal using a single
password and continue to work familiar
Microsoft user interfaces.
Exchange Server 2003 operates as a central
communication point in the Wolfsburg City
Council network, supporting collaboration
between employees in geographically
“Active Directory is distributed offices. It also provides tools for
extremely well suited to standardised administration of messaging
and documents, and effectively sharing
administering a large network resources.
number of
Benefits
organisational units, Due to the new e-government portal that
hardware devices, and supports information sharing across remote
offices, Wolfsburg City Council has improved
applications.” the delivery and effectiveness of its services
to its citizens.
Wolfgang Beuermann, IT Manager, Wolfsburg
City Council Centralised IT Administration Reduces Costs
and Delivers Time Savings
Previously, telephone numbers, e-mail
inboxes, and access rights profiles were
created individually for each employee. Using
Active Directory, IT staff can conduct these
tasks centrally and apply changes across all
applications in use. Beuermann says: “Active
Directory is extremely well suited to
administering a large number of
organisational units, hardware devices, and
applications.”
This is because the directory service contains
all the information and access rights profiles
for PCs and their users. New user accounts
can be created and removed at a central
location. Beuermann says: “It is no longer
necessary for administrators to walk through
buildings or travel to outlying offices when
computer problems arise or when new
employees start work. As a result, we have
been able to reduce our workloads
significantly and achieve considerable time
savings.”
Enhanced Security for Sensitive Data
Centralised management of all applications
and users in the council network has
significantly increased security for sensitive
data. This is because user profiles and
access rights are constantly up to date.
Beuermann says: “Previously, users had to be
logged out of every individual application,
which was not always done consistently.
There was also a risk that user access rights
were not always up to date because they had
to be managed manually. Using the new
system, we can be sure that employees
leaving the council are removed from Active
Directory and their access rights withdrawn.
We can also be sure that only authorised
personnel access the council network.”
Support for Future IT Projects
The new IT infrastructure maximises the
value of previous technology investments and
will support a range of future IT initiatives.
Beuermann says: “With the new
infrastructure we can respond quickly to
changing information management
requirements. We are also able to continue
working with our existing solutions,
maximising past technology investments.”
Wolfsburg City Council already has plans to
extend its Exchange Server 2003 messaging
environment to local schools. Beuermann
says: “During the next 12 months, we hope to
roll out Exchange Server 2003 and the
Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 e-mail
interface to 20,000 schools locally, delivering
a range of new educational opportunities in
the process.”
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For more information about Wolfsburg City

Council products and services, call
05361282702 or visit the Web site at:
www.wolfsburg.de

Software and Services − Microsoft Windows Server 2003

 Microsoft Office − Microsoft Windows XP Professional
− Microsoft Office 2003 Professional  Technologies
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio − Microsoft Active Directory
− Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
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Document published August 2006