Customer Success Story:

NetMotion gets the Karlsruhe public transport system going

Verkehrsbetriebe Karlsruhe GmbH (VBK) has been offering attractive public transport for many decades as a cost-effective and ecologically sensible alternative to individual transport. With around 1,300 employees, a close-knit network of routes stretches from the Rhine to the high-altitude districts, on which modern trams and buses offer a frequent service almost around the clock.

In addition to the pure transport services, VBK also has large building yards, workshops and an efficient IT department that also provides IT services for the subsidiary, Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft mbH and the Karlsruhe Transport Association.

The challenge

Ensuring seamless, secure and reliable connectivity is one of the tasks of the 30-person IT department at VBK. Stability and bandwidth are important because the employees use SAP from the municipal data center, for example. For a few years, a tailor-made solution from a classic security provider in the form of a firewall VPN was used, followed by the implementation of Microsoft‘s DirectAccess VPN, which didn’t meet functionality expectations, was unstable, and proved to be complex to use and maintain. The decision was made to procure a modern solution for secure connectivity.

The solution

NetMotion came off best in an evaluation because of its seamless roaming and always-on connectivity. The fact that it is extremely stable and very easy to use resulted in minimal effort for both IT administrators and end users.

Our approximately 400 administrative employees use the NetMotion technology constantly – whether in the on-site office, in the home office or on the move.
Mohammed Amine, VBK IT project manager

Wir haben zu Beginn ein Proof of Concept mit NetMotion durchgeführt, dann ein kleines Deployment ausgerollt, das kontinuierlich wächst und ausgebaut wird. Die Lösung ist einfach skalierbar und sehr einfach in der Installation.
Mohammed Amine, VBK IT project manager

Results and outlook

VBK is currently in the process of expanding the use of NetMotion to additional functional areas outside of administration. The plan is to install the solution in maintenance and in other departments on around 1,000 clients. In the final expansion stage, NetMotion should run on all mobile devices from VBK and AVG, including the tablets of the train drivers. By using the NetMotion solution, the VBK benefit in many ways:

The always-on VPN eliminates the need for users to manually start the VPN and authenticate.
The NetMotion software permanently manages the data connection independently and ensures a seamless and high-performance connection.
The software is extremely user-friendly and low-maintenance, both as a client and as a server. “The intelligence is in the software,” says Amine.
The VBK thus create the prerequisites for seamless, secure and reliable connectivity across the entire company and a successful path into the future with the use of NetMotion’s SDP functionality.

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