Rehabilitative service provider streamlines endpoint management

Benefits

• Manage 4,500 devices with 1 IT team member instead of 3
• Report on systems conditions within minutes, not weeks
• Ensure security and reporting compliance
• Support wise technology decision-making
• Drive a more strategic contribution from IT

The Story

The Fundação Centro de Atendimento Socioeducativo ao Adolescente (CASA) is part of the Department of Justice and Citizenship of the Brazilian state of São Paulo. Fundação CASA provides socio-educational and rehabilitative services to young people between 12 and 21 years of age. The organization works closely with municipalities to ensure that offenders sentenced to round-the-clock or part-time confinement can remain close to their communities. This practice has greatly reduced the rate of recidivism and the occurrence of rebellions.

An opportunity to modernize systems management

In Fundação CASA’s fleet of 11,000 endpoint devices, 4,500 are servers, laptops and desktops that play a key role in enabling employees to do their work

The IT team managed these devices with an asset management software that it developed, but its capabilities were limited. Julio Signorini, CIO at Fundação CASA, explains, “We couldn’t rely on our software tool to give us an accurate, detailed map of our environment or distribute security updates. These tasks required manual intervention, but that led to a failure in device mapping that gave us only partial visibility of our infrastructure. The resulting vulnerabilities were critical to remedy.”

Without a complete view of the device inventory, the IT team found it difficult to maintain compliance with the Brazilian General Data Protection Law and Fundação CASA’s policies. Reporting on data protection measures, software licensing, licensing costs and anticipated spending required substantial time and effort. As the IT team looked for a more powerful asset management solution, it also sought a way to automate frequent support and maintenance tasks and to shorten incident response times.

Cloud solution helps IT to move the organization forward

A review of potential products and vendors identified the KACE® Systems Management Appliance by Quest® as the offering with the most promise for addressing Fundação CASA’s requirements. Integrating the KACE Systems Management Appliance with its proprietary service desk to manage support tickets had the potential of simplifying and improving the responsiveness of Fundação CASA’s IT support services.

The IT group collaborated with Quest partners Formato and LenanzoTech to deploy and integrate the cloud-based solution. “Formato and LenanzoTech have extremely competent, professional, and insightful teams,” Signorini says. “They helped us effectively implement the KACE Systems Management Appliance and provided us with a broader understanding of the solution to optimize our environment as a whole.”

By implementing the KACE Systems Management Appliance, Fundação CASA was able to take great strides toward Signorini’s main objective of enabling policies — for example, because they are behind in antivirus software updates. “The KACE Systems Management Appliance enables us to be fast and proactive in ensuring the legal and security compliance of our computing environment,” says Signorini. “With a complete map of all devices and vulnerable points in our infrastructure, we can quickly implement updates to correct security flaws across multiple applications or at a hardware level.”

In addition, deploying software patches and updates through the KACE Systems Management Appliance is not disruptive to computing operations. “We test specific machines and check the outcomes of a given update in a controlled manner, without risking any downtime.”

Automating for speed and efficiency

Managing devices and software systems with the KACE Systems Management Appliance enables the Fundação CASA IT team to accelerate and automate many processes. One result is that the IT department today just needs one person to manage endpoint devices and was able to reassign two other team members to more critical tasks. “We automated many problem-solving and corrective actions by relying on the mapping capabilities of the KACE Systems Management Appliance,” Signorini explains. “This IT to make a greater contribution to the organization. “Our biggest challenge is to ensure that Fundação CASA can make the most of its IT resources to achieve its goals and find ways for technology and IT managers to play a strategic role,” he says.

Complete transparency and immediate reporting

The solution deployment immediately enhanced IT managers’ visibility and management capabilities. Signorini describes, “A before-and-after comparison showed a clear improvement in the quality of data we receive. We could access precise information on our entire infrastructure, both hardware and software, including detailed visibility of software licensing. The KACE Systems Management Appliance greatly contributed to our decision-making and management, and it delivered additional capabilities for deploying and managing software across our device fleet.”

With full transparency of physical assets and software licenses, reporting became faster and easier. “It used to take us weeks to gather information for a thorough report on devices and licenses, but with the KACE solution it’s ready within minutes after we define the parameters,” Signorini adds.

Ensuring compliance without disrupting productivity

By using the KACE Systems Management Appliance, IT can identify non-compliant software and reliably pinpoint devices that don’t comply with security minimized the need for technician interventions, saving us time and reducing IT workloads. KACE also allows us to implement infrastructure policies without the need for Group Policy Objects.”

Technology users at Fundação CASA experience faster resolution of their concerns and can focus on their work without interrupting productivity. When issues that users bring up highlight a common, network-wide problem, the IT team often takes advantage of the KACE Systems Management Appliance to automate the remedy. Signorini comments, “As we implement corrections by means of scripts executed by the KACE Systems Management Appliance, in a few minutes we can apply remedial measures that used to take 20 to 30 minutes in traditional support delivery.”

Collaboration toward a transformative future

Implementing the KACE Systems Management Appliance was an important step in Fundação CASA’s cloud strategy. The organization, which uses both private and public cloud technology, is about to transition DevOps to a cloud platform. IT stakeholders are also exploring One Identity, which could complement systems and asset management with the KACE Systems Management Appliance by giving users secure, policy-compliant access to applications and data. As Fundação CASA evolves its technology, it expects to continue collaborating with Quest. In closing, Signorini emphasizes, “Quest has been a strategic partner in the implementation of new technology solutions, and it is crucial for the digital transformation we are currently undergoing.”