baramundi Success Stories
Alfred Ritter
Retail & Food
Say goodbye to manual IT administration
Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG, based in Waldenbuch, Swabia, and known for its RITTER SPORT chocolate brand, took advantage of the upcoming expiration of its contract with its IT service provider to look for a modern and comprehensive management solution for its clients. The company found what it was looking for with the Augsburg-based software manufacturer baramundi.
Install Operating Systems and Software Consistently
“Here, every new client we add to our IT environment is first completely reset to zero. That means we remove 100 percent of any preinstalled software,” says Michael Jany. The network and system administrator explains that this approach is necessary because pre-configured clients come with too many programs and versions that aren’t needed.
Michael Jany, network and system administrator at Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG, works with his colleagues to manage 800 clients and 200 thin clients. For hardware, Jany and his colleagues rely on Lenovo laptops and desktop PCs running Windows 7.
“We want to keep our clients lean,” Michael Jany continues. The IT team installs the operating systems fully automatically using the native Microsoft installation method with the baramundi Management Suite. This ensures a proper and standardized process.
With a market presence in over 100 countries, Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG is one of the world’s best-known chocolate manufacturers. To ensure that employees can rely on an IT environment that is always up-to-date and functioning properly, comprehensive management of the IT infrastructure is essential.
Automated Hardware Detection
Automated hardware detection automatically assigns the appropriate drivers. “Setting up a client with a new operating system using the baramundi solution is really fast,” explains Michael Jany.
IT administrators are now also significantly faster when it comes to software distribution. At Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG, 150 so-called jobs are currently running for software deployment, deploying applications such as the Office suite and other standard software from baramundi’s managed software package.
Here, too, a quick and automated installation based on the original setup procedure is used. If a solution needs to be removed, this is also done natively. The use of a self service kiosk is already being considered but is still in the testing phase. “If the results are positive, I can very well imagine that employees will then be allowed to install software approved by us on their own,” Michael Jany says.
Updating third-party software and applying patches without any downtime
Outdated software versions not only pose a high risk in terms of system instability, but also create critical security vulnerabilities if the software is not patched. Due to ever-shorter update cycles and the sheer number of software applications, IT administrators must spend an enormous amount of time packaging and rolling out updates.
“If you just take an application like Adobe Reader and want to build a working MSI (Microsoft Software Installer file) for packaging, half a day is quickly gone. And the files haven’t even been tested on a system yet.”
"baramundi takes care of this for us—it’s truly worth its weight in gold," says Michael Jany.
All current software versions are reviewed in advance by baramundi experts, packaged, and made available to the IT managers at Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG for immediate installation.
“If you assume just one update per month, you save at least two days of work—and that’s just the time saved for a single application. If you apply this approach to a large number of applications, the time savings are, of course, much greater. Thanks to the baramundi solution, we have more time again for other tasks.”
Michael Jany | Network and System Administrator at Alfred Ritter
