August Faller GmbH & Co. KG – Made-to-measure: a new, modern Microsoft infrastructure

August Faller GmbH & Co. KG – Made-to-measure: a new, modern Microsoft infrastructure.

August Faller GmbH & Co. KG, or Faller Packaging, is known for its pharmaceutical and healthcare packaging products. The more than 1,300 employees are distributed around five locations and the headquarters in Waldkirch, a town in south-western Baden-Württemberg. Until recently, the company’s IT department had been working with a Microsoft and Citrix infrastructure, but as the licences were expiring and thoughts turned to more modern collaboration tools, Faller Packaging took the decision to completely rethink its IT strategy with the help of Microsoft and Bechtle, who successfully rolled out the project across the company.

Project details.

Services

Modern Workplace
Software
Cloud

Industry

Manufacturing

Manufacturer

Microsoft

Company size

250 – 1,500 employees

Challenge.

August Faller GmbH & Co. KG (Faller Packaging) has been producing tailored secondary packaging solutions for the pharmaceutical industry for over 30 years. This includes folding boxes, package leaflets, adhesive labels and a combination of all for medicinal products. Faller packaging produces both standard and customised solutions, perfectly tailored to the customers’ needs. Digitalised and perfectly aligned processes ensure maximum efficiency, sustainable production and fast shipping times. In addition, Faller Packaging also offers its customers customised logistics serveries and supply chain concepts.

Up until recently, the company has been using an IT infrastructure based on Citrix and Microsoft with classic, purchased licences. As the existing Microsoft landscape needed to be updated and the client and server structures renewed, it was a good opportunity to analyse the Microsoft licencing model. Faller Packaging were looking for a standardised, homogenous infrastructure that could be seamlessly integrated into the Microsoft product landscape. Applications and data provisioned on the basis of Citrix services needed to be strategically rethought and realigned. Faller Packaging therefore decided to follow a path to IT modernisation with Microsoft and Azure services.

We needed a variety of licencing models for our workplace scenarios. Working together with Bechtle, we were able to leverage our expertise and precision to tackle the challenge head on. We’d like to make particular mention of the excellent team work between our IT and the various Bechtle system houses. Everything went very smoothly and we were very impressed by the results of the individual service units over the course of the project. The project manager was on top of everything and so the project was a complete success.

Thomas Bertram, Vice President IT, August Faller GmbH & Co. KG

Solution.

The challenge: Faller Packaging were running approx. 700 clients with 40 applications and the clients on the production line were being used by several employees in various shifts. To overcome this and various other issues, Bechtle and the Faller IT department worked closely together, supported by numerous experts at several Bechtle system houses, with those in Freiburg and Stuttgart liaising with Faller’s IT and Microsoft in initial workshops to clarify which Microsoft licence could and should be used at which workstation. Microsoft then verified the identified licencing models before releasing them, after which Bechtle Freiburg collaborated with the Faller IT team to set up the Azure infrastructure services, which included Exchanges services, One Drive and also authentication methods. The Bechtle Group company, HanseVision, collaborated with Faller packaging to implement a new SharePoint infrastructure, which had been prepared during the design workshops, and were on hand offering support during the migration of data into the cloud. Bechtle Freiburg was solely responsible for project coordination and management and was also available in a consulting capacity for all Faller Packaging’s questions. And it didn’t end there, with the Freiburg-based experts setting up the new clients—notebooks and mini Pcs—as well as Azure Backup.

After extensive Proof of Concept testing and pilot phase, Bechtle Freiburg rolled out the clients across the entire company. HanseVision managed SharePoint user adoption and data migration and offered their support with change management while Bechtle Karlsruhe took on the training of users in how to use their new clients and applications.

At all stages of the project, the Faller Packaging IT team and management were on hand to offer Bechtle fast and expert support, and this mix of in-house and external expertise and implementation more than led to the project’s success.

Business benefits.

Step by step, each Faller Packaging location has been migrated to the new Microsoft environment. Costs have been reduced thanks to a decrease in the number of servers and additional software, computing resources are now in the cloud and the software licences can be flexibly managed, which all means that Faller Packaging now has a secure, homogenous, future-proof and flexible environment that is fully Microsoft based.