When Oberursel fire brigade in Germany sought to make every second count across its round-the-clock IT systems, they turned to TeamViewer remote management and monitoring software.
Valentin Reuter, fire warden for Oberursel, says the technology helps the team catch IT problems in time.
“When a problem occurs, I receive a message from TeamViewer Remote Management and I can fix it immediately. This helps us avoid situations where a fault is only discovered and reported when it is actually too late,” Reuter says in the TeamViewer case study.
Oberursel is a small city in the state of Hesse.
According to TeamViewer, the fire brigade’s IT hardware and software must be kept updated all the time to facilitate access for emergency services by a single IT professional. Manual monitoring and updating took a lot of time.
TeamViewer’s monitoring and asset management watches over the status of all VPN-connected devices and enables centralised operating system and other software updates as well as emailing the IT manager automatically about any problems with the system that it detects.
As a result, the chance of IT-related delays to operations is reduced, and the IT manager spends fewer hours per month on software updates for five district Oberursel fire brigades, comprising 280 volunteer firefighters.
Oberursel is a growing city, with fire brigades under pressure to do more with less as more homes, businesses and other locations such as car parks must be kept safe.
“The 280 firefighters go out about 1,000 times a year to fight fires, help in accidents, rescue people or organise events,” according to TeamViewer.
“[Previously] I had to dial into the computers in the vehicles and our fire brigades one by one to check whether the software was running, whether all updates were installed or whether there was paper and ink in the printer,” adds Reuter.
“In the worst case, we only noticed a problem when an operation was imminent — when there was absolutely no time for troubleshooting.”
Reuter says the fire brigade had been controlling its computer systems remotely for years. However, the IT officer can now also centrally manage, monitor, patch and protect its computers, monitors, printers and software via an web-based console.
“The decisive factor was that the new solution also works for third-party software providers such as WinSCP or Office components,” he says.
TeamViewer, which also makes cloud-based remote connectivity platform Tensor, recently announced a partnership with Siemens Healthineers to enable a new remote scanning service, WeScan, for diagnostic imaging to speed up processing of images for radiologists.
( Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash )
