Bechtle: Reduce workload in IT operations

Company

Bechtle AG is the parent and holding company of the Bechtle Group with 70 IT system houses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as IT trading companies in 14 European countries. Bechtle AG is responsible for strategic corporate planning and central tasks such as IT, finance and human resources.

Inital Situation

Increased Workload and Need for Automation in IT Operations

Before the introduction of ScriptRunner, the operating teams were faced with large workloads for daily routine administration tasks. Adherence to SLAs, the expectation of ever shorter response times and higher quality as well as the desire for higher efficiency in IT operations can only be achieved with the help of automation and delegation for the IT teams. In general, the approach of the operating teams is to define a standard workflow for tasks and check whether these can be fully or partially automated, or even delegated. This is the only way they are able to open up space for business-driven and innovative IT projects.

Challenge

However, the assignment of rights proved to be extremely difficult, especially when delegating tasks, because Service Desk employees needed extended authorizations on the target systems (e.g. Microsoft Active Directory or Microsoft Exchange/ Office 365 and many more), which is often not desired. In many cases, the use of traditional admin tools for employees in the service desk is therefore ruled out.

Solution

Flexible and Automated Task Delegation with ScriptRunner

„With ScriptRunner we are much more flexible and can design tasks according to our wishes“, says Marc Woll (Server & Backend Specialist, Bechtle AG). A standard is defined for all use cases, which is packed into the corresponding PowerShell code and sent centrally via ScriptRunner or run fully automatically. All processes can be traced at any time through reporting. The Delegate App allows Service Desk staff to perform delegated actions with a clear web interface. The masks for necessary entries are generated automatically and the entries are checked. A configurable, interactive feedback shows the user the status and result of the execution. In addition, these tasks can also be controlled from applications using automation connectors and run fully automatically. 

Recurring and content delegable tasks in PowerShell scripts can be mapped and quickly and easily applied with a simple tool by service staff and/or other administrators. This results in a number of benefits, even without PowerShell‘s command line expertise. Roles and rights are completely decoupled, resulting in a high level of security. In the Exchange area, for example, all information (size, name, status, etc.) is retrieved from the databases fully automatically using a task. This information is also written back to the corresponding SQL databases via ScriptRunner. Appropriate size limits are also set for several thousand Exchange mailboxes and checked via a time-controlled task. „Many of the delegated tasks revolve around the topics MS Active Directory and MS Exchange. ScriptRunner gives us the opportunity to delegate various tasks to the support units without having to give colleagues authorizations in the system,“ summarizes Marc Woll.

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