Success Story
Thüringer Aufbaubank

Thüringer Aufbaubank

Promotion of the economy, housing construction and infrastructure projects in Thuringia through financial support and advice

Industry: Finance
Location: Germany

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Product requirements

Cloud

MyEngineer®

Managed Services

Thüringer Aufbaubank (TAB), based in Erfurt, is the development bank of the Free State of Thuringia. Since its foundation in 1992, TAB has supported a wide range of projects in business and agriculture, start-ups and research institutions. It provides municipalities with financial resources for the construction or renovation of schools and roads, among other things, and allocates funds for nature conservation projects and public infrastructure. In 2003, bm|t is founded as a universal investment company for Thuringia. It is a subsidiary of Thüringer Aufbaubank and currently manages assets of 250 million euros. From its original 5 employees, TAB has grown to over 400, who now work on 60 funding programs.

The challenge

The more recent history of TAB is one in which many people will find themselves. When the coronavirus pandemic took hold in spring 2020, a company that previously had little or nothing to do with remote working suddenly found itself working from home. That changed a lot. “It was basically possible to work, and the VPN solution set up at short notice was great for this,” says Nico Kutschke, IT Services Team Leader at TAB. “However, the availability of colleagues was severely limited and was mostly restricted to emails and phone calls. Meetings were limited to the most necessary and high-priority topics. The remaining topics were neglected and everyday working life was made much more difficult.”

These missing meetings were a serious setback and a major obstacle, as TAB employees attach great importance to “an open, respectful and honest culture of discussion”. They were used to being in conversation, holding meetings on site in meeting rooms. A reliable, secure and uncomplicated solution that would also allow this to take place online had to be found as quickly as possible.

Initially, we discussed hosting and operating Jitsi ourselves. However, we quickly realized that this would be a mammoth task and that we lacked both the know-how and the time for it.

Nico Kutschke | Team Leader IT Services

Solution

Suitable managed service solution

The open source video conferencing platform Jitsi in conjunction with a SIP gateway for telephone dial-in was the technical solution of choice. Users have access from virtually any device, HD video and voice run smoothly even in larger groups. Screen sharing and collaborative editing of documents are easily possible. The TAB IT team ruled out other comparable technical options “due to data protection problems, high costs, insane license models or complicated integration”.

Competence and security

NETWAYS quickly became the partner of choice for hosting and operating Jitsi. All Jitsi instances at NETWAYS are located completely securely, distributed across two ISO-certified data centers in Germany. The application can be set up and started within minutes. NETWAYS has won the trust of TAB primarily thanks to the high level of commitment and initiative of its employees. “Mr. Mimietz and Mr. Rothlauf have moved worlds.” The implementation process then took place “almost by itself. We only had to do a minimal amount of work.”

Concentration on the core business

This has given Kutschke and his team enough time and freedom to concentrate on other important tasks, such as the ongoing operation of the remaining infrastructure and enabling employees to work remotely with the help of remote access, terminal servers and VPN.

NETWAYS made a very competent impression, which was confirmed. Committed, fair and methodical.

Nico Kutschke | Team Leader IT Services

Success

Improving internal communication

Jitsi is now heavily integrated into the day-to-day work of the Thüringer Aufbaubank. Almost all meetings take place there. In addition to regular meetings, divisional meetings, crisis teams and management meetings are also held via Jitsi. This is also noticeable in the reduced utilization of meeting rooms. Equally pleasing: the video conferences with Jitsi have even significantly improved external communication.

Uncomplicated and simple

Nico Kutschke is pleased that online voting also works very well and that employees working from home are well integrated thanks to Jitsi. Visions can also be communicated and promoted very well via video – safely, cost-effectively and easily.