Martinair Streamlines Workstations with Immidio Flex+ Universal desktop, “anywhere, anytime, anyplace”

Martinair Holland NV was founded by Martin Schröder in 1958 and has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of the KLM Group since December 31, 2008. It is made up of three business units: a , a maintenance and engineering division, and the Martinair Flight Academy. Based at Schiphol Airport, Martinair Cargo is the KLM Group’s specialist in so-called full-freighter operations. This activity requires a flexible organization, capable of adjusting flight schedules to meet customer needs right up until shortly before departure. IT is essential to this responsiveness. All employees need access to their personal work environment, with their own applications, from any workstation. And to prevent loss of productivity, that access has to be instant. Thanks to Immidio Flex+, this is now possible.

Martinair makes extensive use of about 400 fixed PCs, but flexible working means that office personnel change places frequently and so regularly find themselves sitting at a different computer. To provide them with their own desktop settings and applications wherever they are, the company is using so-called “roaming profiles.” In the past IT management was performed in-house, but roaming profiles caused numerous problems. The profiles were easily corrupted, with immediate consequences: the user was unable to operate the affected computer until the IT department had resolved the issue. Moreover, booting up a PC took anything from five to fifteen minutes.

Pim Brouwer, Project Manager at the Martinair Information Management Organization: “In 2008, Martinair decided to outsource its information technology and management to KPN Getronics. But, because the workplace concept KPN Getronics offered was based very much on the existing situation, a lot of the problems were simply ‘carried over’ and not solved.”

A New Concept Ongoing consolidation of the Martinair and KLM organizations has led to closer collaboration in the field of IT. As a result, the service contract with KPN Getronics was ended. The more integrated operation works on the principle that KLM systems are adopted as standard, unless particular Martinair requirements make them unsuitable. Because the parent company organizes its workstations in a fundamentally different way, that was one of the standards Martinair eventually opted not to share.

“We regard the workstation as a tool that has to function flawlessly,” says Brouwer. “And if something does go wrong, the users themselves should be able to solve the problem if at all possible. That self-sufficiency eases the burden on the helpdesk, but even more importantly, waiting for assistance means not being able to work. And that means lost productivity.”

In addition, Martinair was working with a Citrix environment (Citrix XenApp) that provided a different desktop when accessed remotely and so resulted in an inconsistent user experience. The company wanted to put that right, and was also keen to shed the “best of breed” approach which had resulted in fragmentation of its IT services. Instead, it was now looking for maximum possible standardization on the Microsoft platform. The Immidio Solution As Martinair IT Architect Hessel Tigchelaar explains, “Given our specifications for the new digital workstation, we could draw heavily on Microsoft products. The exception was profile management, where they didn’t have a solution that we had sufficient trust in. So for that we started talking with Microsoft partners, and soon discovered Flex Profiles from Immidio. We did have one more requirement: the selected product had to have proven itself in practice. Fortunately, the Immidio solution passed that test easily. We did look at alternatives, of course, but a competing product from another Dutch software firm was far too expensive.”

Soon after taking the decision to implement Flex Profiles, Martinair was informed by Immidio about its successor, Flex+. That was so appealing that the airline became one of the first customers to take up the beta version. To immediate and complete satisfaction!

Amazing “We’ve had incredibly few problems with Flex+,” says Pim Brouwer, “even though it was a beta version. We also needed amazingly little contact with Immidio! For us it’s very important that, with this solution, we can now restore the settings in each application individually. Not that there are many users who know that, because everything runs so well. Really, we still find it remarkable that we’ve had so few issues. What’s more, users logging on to Citrix are now offered the same start menu as when working on an office PC. That’s a great success. Our users very much appreciate the logon speed, too. They can now get down to work within a minute, literally. Thanks to Flex+, the number of incidents has fallen and so the helpdesk is taking far fewer calls.” That makes the new Martinair workstation much cheaper than its predecessor.

In fact, all the firm’s previous workstation concerns have evaporated. Everything works properly in Citrix as well, and users no longer have to hunt down their applications. Citrix is also an ideal platform for “bring your own device” solutions. As long as they can establish a connection, with Flex+ users are presented with exactly the same desktop wherever they are: at home, at work or on the road, on a PC, laptop or iPad. The result: a great user experience across the board.

Immidio: General Information

Founded in 2008 and based in Amsterdam, the , Immidio is a software

Burgemeester Stramanweg 101 development company dedicated to making a real difference in your day-to-day computing

1101 AA Amsterdam environment. Our products are designed to empower both end-users and IT departments in The Netherlands terms of usability and quantifiable cost savings. T: +31(0)20 3080170 F: +31(0)20 6977238 We serve enterprises by providing end-users with a relevant and consistent desktop experience E: [email protected] that is independent of operating system, device and location. We realize that modern workforces expect flexibility from their employers; users need to have the capability to work anywhere with multiple devices and a high degree of self-service.

Our flagship product Immidio Flex+ provides end-users with a personalized and dynamic Windows desktop that is adapted to their specific situation based on aspects like role, device and location. Immidio Flex+ is simple to implement, affordably priced, highly effective and uses the existing Windows infrastructure, without requiring additional investments.