The Ministry of Social Development in the Kingdom of Bahrain recently completed a project that saw it implement an IT transformation project using Novell technologies. Following the implementation, the Ministry of Social Development (MOSD) in the Kingdom of Bahrain has improved security, cut costs, accelerated user provisioning and reduced support workload by more than 60%. The Novell solution also ensures that the Ministry is in line with a central government initiative to embrace open source technologies whenever possible.
The Kingdom of Bahrain, an island state in the Arabian Gulf, has a population of just over one million people. The MOSD employs approximately 600 people working as a team with a wide range of sectors, institutions and individuals to develop the Bahraini society, and to achieve and sustain high-quality social welfare. The Ministry’s mission includes: improving the life of Bahraini citizens, promoting social cohesion, improving the performance of social services and optimising the benefits from all of society’s resources.
Challenge
As a new ministry—though with some resources and responsibilities split out from the Ministry of Labour—the MOSD needed to build its own IT infrastructure and software solutions. Financial and HR applications were available as a shared managed service, run by the Ministry of Finance and the Civil Service Bureau respectively, using the Government Data Network controlled by the Kingdom of Bahrain’s Central Informatics Organisation (CIO). The MOSD wrote its own operational applications to run on Oracle Application Server with Oracle Database.
The MOSD wanted to create efficient network and application services for internal users, as well as ensuring security for sensitive information. With a relatively small IT team, the organisation also wanted to streamline and automate user and desktop management as far as possible, so as to keep skilled technicians free to focus on higher-value tasks.
The MOSD also wanted ease of access to applications and data as an important consideration, as some Ministry staff frequently work away from the headquarters, travelling between and around 20 social service sites.
Novell solution
“We tested Novell Open Enterprise Server running on Linux, as well as competing technologies, and it soon became clear that the Novell solution was far more stable and secure,” says Rashid Al Madani, Director of IT at MOSD. “The openness and flexibility of Linux makes it our preferred server operating system. We run our Oracle databases and applications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and we hope to migrate our remaining applications to Linux over time.”
The MOSD was a trail-blazer for Linux and other open source technologies in Bahrain; the Kingdom’s “Vision 2030” strategy now strongly encourages other ministries to go down the same route, in order to cut costs, increase flexibility and reduce reliance on specific vendors.
To simplify user administration and control access to sensitive data, the MOSD deployed Novell Identity Manager and Novell SecureLogin, which provides single sign-on capabilities.
“Novell ZENworks Configuration Management and Novell eDirectory give us full control over users, their desktops and the data shared among them, while Novell Identity Management provides full access control over users for integrated applications in our infrastructure,” says Al Madani. “This saves time and effort and increases security. For example, when we disable a user’s account, the Novell solution automatically removes all access rights.”
The MOSD has integrated Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange Server into the identity management environment, so that automatic provisioning workflows include the setup of user e-mail accounts. Role-based provisioning assigns access rights according to each employee’s function and seniority, keeping sensitive data locked down.
Finally, the MOSD deployed Novell ZENworks Configuration Management on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to enable the management of all end-user PC administration from a central point of control: installing new software, pushing out security updates, checking inventory and delivering remote support.
Results
With Novell Open Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the MOSD has a stable, flexible and secure infrastructure that offers low total cost of ownership.
“We initially chose the Novell solutions as best-of-breed, not specifically because they were open source – the reduced cost is a good additional benefit,” says Al Madani.
Novell Identity Manager reduces administrative effort around user and security management and boosts security. The use of Novell SecureLogin for single sign-on gives users rapid access to their applications from any desktop PC in any MOSD office location.
“We can complete most user provisioning tasks within minutes,” says Al Madani. “A new user can access the systems they need in no longer than a working day. Without Novell Identity Manager, user provisioning would take at least four times longer, because we’d need to create accounts in each relevant portion of the infrastructure. The solution also improves security by giving us a single point of control and an accurate view of all access rights associated with each user account.”
Using Novell ZENworks Configuration Management, IT staff at the MOSD can carry out maintenance and support remotely, enabling them to focus more on testing and adopting new technologies and improving performance. “We estimate that Novell ZENworks Configuration Management reduces our support effort by at least 60 percent,” says Al Madani.
