Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead Univention provides the IT infrastructure for the car dealership and ensures more efficiency and security

Replacement of obsolete Microsoft AD and reduction of administrative overhead at Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead through modern management system with UCS

Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead is a car dealership located in Atlanta, Georgia, in the USA, with an affiliated workshop, where some 150 employees work on 75 end devices that need to be serviced.
The outdated Microsoft Active Directory environment was frequently experiencing problems with integration between various IT services and clients and was to be replaced. The IT managers wanted a standardized user interface that could be used to easily manage both users and services. They also wanted to introduce consistent password policies for the entire domain to increase security, use existing enterprise servers more efficiently, and centrally provide file sharing and roaming profiles. By doing so, those in charge were hoping for a significant reduction in the administrative overhead that had previously arisen in the maintenance of the IT systems.

Good integration of Mercedes specialized applications into the identity management of UCS

In addition to the expert project consulting provided by the Univention Professional Service Team and the fact that UCS is a 100% Open Source solution, the decisive factor for the decision in favor of UCS was above all the prospect of a good integration of the existing Mercedes-Benz specialist applications, e.g. for inventory management, scheduling or financing.

Migration of the Microsoft Active Directory domain to UCS in the blink of an eye

The initial implementation of UCS was carried out in just one afternoon under the supervision of Univention’s Professional Services. Only a week later, all virtual and physical desktops were joined into the new UCS domain. Within the scope of the project, the migration from the MS Active Directory domain to UCS with connection to Samba 4 was carried out by creating new users and individually joining the virtual machines to the UCS domain.

Lean and affordable IT infrastructure through virtual desktops and thin clients

The use of virtual desktop systems and thin clients for employees now ensures a cost-efficient and slim IT environment at Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead. A particular advantage of the new, UCS-based solution is the possibility to integrate Mercedes-specific specialist applications, e.g. for the sales processing of cars, but also for the later maintenance of vehicles, into the central management of UCS. This allows for the quick and easy creation of access rights for these specialist applications for employees, which can then be managed centrally via the web-based management console. In addition, WLAN and VPN access for employees can now also be managed with this central user administration and a central profile storage can be set up.

Future Projects – Integration of Additional Services and Backup

After the speedy and successful migration from Microsoft AD to UCS, the IT managers of the car dealership are now planning to integrate further specialist applications into the user and domain management of UCS. Furthermore, they would like to secure the data and processes more strongly by modernizing the backup infrastructure.

Bottom line: Super Service – Super Product

Dequavious Daniels, Head of IT, Mercedes-Benz of Buckhead, was impressed by the many possibilities offered by UCS as a product and by the cooperation with the Univention team. “The amazing cooperation with Univention’s team was evident at all levels: from management to professional service to sales, competent contact persons were available to help us at all times, even when it came to answering very system-specific questions. We are really happy to now be able to work with such a well integrated and easy-to-use management infrastructure throughout our entire company IT”.