Centralised User-Management successful at E-Plus

User administration at E-Plus rationalised by the centralised user management “ZUM”

The E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG implemented in cooperation with the “Institut für System-Management” (iSM) a centralised user and authorisation administration-system ( bi-Cube^® Professional) into the head office Enterprise.

E-Plus GmbH & Co. KG is a relatively young, technically oriented mobile telephone supplier with several hundred UNIX servers and a central organisational structure, which however had to be subjected to changes due to rapid growth of the last years.

In order to accord the high security standards nevertheless and to enable an effective administration and authorisation at the same time, the installation of a centralised system including automatic processing had become essential.

By this project the following goals were accomplished:

transparent administration of all users and its competences in a central file
allocation of rights for roles
automated assignment of the roles and through this rights about an application
    workflow
automated administration of the target systems (UNIX server,
    ADS); new plant and deletion of user accounts
controlled employee leaving by the system with a regulated deletion of
    all its rights
clear reduction in the administrative costs

In order to control the quite dynamic development of the enterprises and system structure, the following problems were solved:

definition role model in dependence on company organisation structure and tasks of
   single departments
analysis of the internal business processes for workflow modeling
integration of systems which cannot be administered automatically
daily automatic comparison with the staff and organisation data
solid, revision safe recording of all system rights of the users
Deletion of all rights of a user who leaves the enterprise, by employee leaving
    workflow, through this reduction of the number if deactivated users
high-performane, scalable front-end for all users at E-Plus (ZIC)

The productive introduction of the ZUM (centralised user management) took place in July 2002. Approximately 5,000 users are administered at 14 locations through out Germany. About 4,000 users are able to access to the web-based bi-Cube^® Professional information centre. The workflow application procedure, which is stored here, has run through so far approx. 5,500 times.

Altogether the accounts of more than 400 UNIX servers are administered automatically by the bi-Cube^® Professional. Windows accounts are administered automatically in two domains. More than 100 global access groups were assigned or extracted to users by bi-Cube^® Professional (ZUM) in the active directory automatically. Altogether over 60.000 system authorisations are assigned to users. There are over 3.700 active roles as well as over 1.000 active systems.

By the clear effect of rationalisation the ROI occurred within two years. In the first year because of the ZUM-use approx. 130,000 Euro were saved in the UNIX Accounting division, which was devised before by an external company. Meanwhile this sum can be estimated to approx. 250,000 Euro. The complexity in the Windows User Administration strongly sank. The automated import of the user and organisational structure from pre-aged systems happens over night.

Further Information:
iSM – Freies Institut für System-Management GmbH
Oldendorfer Straße 12
D-18147 Rostock, Germany
Tel. +49 381/ 37 57 3-0
info (at) secu-sys.com