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Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra)

 

Mobile Device Solutions

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Customer Success Story

Mobile Device Solutions

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is the government department responsible for environmental protection, food production and standards, agriculture, fisheries and rural communities in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

“We’re very pleased with boxxe’s mobile device management service.  To date, the system has fulfilled all of our expectations, and boxxe has proved to be a responsive and supportive service provider.  They are quick to adapt to new requirements and boxxe has delivered all projects on time and within all agreed performance parameters.”

Graham Wells , Cloud Service Manager, Defra

 Results_

Rapid migration

1,800 devices in first month

Service Maintained

99% availability

Mobile Device Management

5,000 active users

boxxe launched VMware Workspace ONE as Defra’s preferred Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution.

With an existing Blackberry hosted environment soon to expire, boxxe migrated 1,800 devices onto the system within the first four weeks of the launch, achieving all enrolments right on schedule.

Within the first five months, we registered 6,000 devices onto the solution, and enrolled 5,000 active users. Enrolments continue at a rate of approximately 250 per week and we handle up to 800 access requests monthly through the service desk.

Since launch, we’ve proactively monitored connections, maintaining 99% availability and answering 99% of calls to the service desk within the time agreed in its SLA. 

What did we do?

  Challenge_

Defra needed a technology provider to manage its vast fleet of mobile devices. It wanted a cloud-based solution, to avoid housing hardware on premise.

At full capacity, the service would need to manage up to 35,000 mobile devices used by DEFRA, Environment Agency (EA) and Rural Payments Agency (RPA) employees.

Since each of these agencies had their own data centre and first-level helpdesk (provided by their respective system integrators) the new MDM service would need to integrate with all of these.

  Plan_

Rich functionality, simplified management and monitoring of multiple mobile devices, and high-grade security made VMware Workspace ONE the perfect MDM solution.

VMware Workspace ONE would enable all Defra mobile devices, of any type, to be managed from a central console. This includes enrolling new devices, managing all apps used by field personnel through secure access to central servers at Defra, managing email access and encryption, and allowing content sharing and collaboration across devices.

  Approach_

Once we’d established clear metrics with DEFRA’s stakeholders at the initiation stage, our technical consultants got to work, designing and building the infrastructure for the hosted service. They integrated it with existing service providers through a central network hub, using Defra’s recently implemented Identity Management System (IDM).

High availability, resilient, active-active architecture was the name of the MDM game. The service is hosted across two geographically dispersed data centres, allowing the load to be shared, or in the event of a fault, switched to just one – offering Defra strong service continuity assurances.

Before launch, we carried out full penetration and security testing to ensure the service was fit for purpose.

  Outcome_

We continue to proactively monitor all connections to ensure the availability of the overall network and to respond to any events or losses of connectivity. As a result, we have access to a vast array of reports and information, which we collate and use to monitor performance, and track user activities and requirements.

We manage device enrolments, device support, request fulfilment and fault identification through our 24-hour second- and third-line service desks, which interact with and support the three existing first-line helpdesks. And to make the whole process smoother, we have developed detailed enrolment guides and provide training for existing first-line helpdesk operators.

Our team provides ongoing support to the user enrolment teams, as well as 24-hour major incident management.

Contact Us

Want to see how we can support your business with mobile device management?

Just contact one of our Modern Workplace Specialists below.

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