Vos Logistics

IGEL Success Story: Vos Logistics

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"Many of our employees are on the road and work outside office hours. If they need access to data and applications for their work, we facilitate a laptop that they can take with them and use at home. This would mainly apply to fleet managers and planners in the different countries. These laptops are often on the road, with no given return date to the office, but the performance and safety of the systems remains the responsibility of the IT team. Certainly, in relation to planning and fleet management, these laptops must function properly; they are core parts of our services".Bob Mulders, Head of Corporate Infrastructure and Network at Vos Logistics

SUMMARY

The Customer

  • Vos Logistics: International Logistics Service Provider
  • > 2.560 Employees
  • > 750 Desktops
  • A network of 30 group-owned locations within Europe

The Challenge

  • Management of remote devices
  • Extend life of existing hardware

The Solution

  • Existing x86 laptops have been converted to the IGEL OS
  • IGEL Universal Management Suite for central management of remote devices

The Results

  • Easy and efficient management of the remote devices
  • Lower TCO
  • Optimal security
  • GDPR-proof
  • Fewer service requests

Vos Logistics is a specialist in a wide range of transport and customer-specific logistics services. With a network of 30 groupowned locations, the company is active throughout Europe, employing 2,560. It operates a modern fleet of 1.250 vehicles, 4,000 loading units and 300,000 m2 of storage space.

Providing customer-specific logistics solutions, from forwarding, warehousing, value-added services and distribution to full supply chain solutions in which Vos Logistics assumes management of all or part of the customer’s goods flow. In the bulk and volume (Mega and High Volume) transport markets, Vos Logistics is one of the largest road hauliers in Europe. The company’s strength lies in its combination of a pan-European network, advanced ICT systems and its focus on quality and service.

The company’s IT department is vital to Vos Logistics’ core business and enables the efficient management of its truck fleet. The IT team, led by Bob Mulders, also ensures that the carrier complies with the rules and regulations in areas such as customs, calculating the costs and price of the cargo and processing toll road payments. Over the years, Vos Logistics has transformed into a progressive logistics service provider. The power of innovation is partly determined by the state-of-the-art IT Service Department that the company has set up.

PRACTICALLY APPLICABLE

The devices were setup with Windows 10 systems accessing our Citrix environment, requiring regular updates on the operating system and antivirus software. It turned out to be difficult to enforce these updates remotely. That is why Bob Mulders and his team looked for alternatives that were easier to manage. They looked at Google Chromebooks, which require considerably less local updates. However, these turned out to raise a number of practical objections, for example in the area of the keyboard layout.

In consultation with Mike Cobussen of T4Change, it was decided to evaluate IGEL as a solution for the manageability of the devices for remote workers. Mulders comments:

“At T4Change they think as a user and not as an administrator. As a result, they come up with ideas that are particularly applicable to the people who have to work with the systems.”

Considering the devices run all applications in a Citrix environment, the question was justified whether the laptops could do without the Windows 10 operating system. The answer to this turned out to be a resounding „Yes“. The IGEL OS forms an excellent basis for Vos Logistics‘ needs with regard to these devices.

THE SOLUTION

IGEL OS is a Linux-based operating system, optimized for secure, scalable delivery of virtual desktops and cloud workstations, such as Citrix, VMware and Office 365. IGEL OS is part of the IGEL Workspace Edition, a bundled licensing offering, together with IGEL‘s management software IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS), a multimedia codec pack, high availability and custom partition functionality and a REST API. After a small-scale assesment Vos Logistics decided to put it to the test and install the IGEL OS, removing Windows 10 from the devices.

SIMPLICITY

As soon as a Vos Logistics employee switches on his laptop, he immediately ends up in the Citrix environment. As it is an IGEL OS „hardened“ operating system, no anti-virus software needs to be installed on the laptops. This provides a number of important advantages:

firstly, the employee (planner or fleet manager) can work more agile, because the start-up is much faster. In addition, there are less problems with the laptop in terms of updates or security. For Bob Mulders and his team, the predominant argument for choosing IGEL was to regain control of the laptops remotely, and that mission, in his opinion was successful.

“We have now standardized all laptops on IGEL OS in combination with Citrix. We can do full remote management, transfer new management policies to all laptops simultaneously in real time, and take remote control of the laptop as needed. Besides the fact that we have more control over the device we noticed that our helpdesk receives fewer service requests” says Mulders.

After successfully finalizing the project for the remote devices, Vos Logistics is considering providing all Windows 7 thin clients, deployed at various locations, with IGEL OS in order to increase manageability and simultaneously extending the lifespan of the devices. Mulders states: „That is certainly an option in the long term.“

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