NOW IT is a specialized IT service provider for five regional pension insurance companies in the north, east, and west of Germany. The company looks after the data of more than 36 million pension insurance contributors.

As such, it is committed to ensuring that statutory pension insurance benefits are reliably calculated and paid, that data is stored securely, and that all required IT systems function smoothly.

Pension insurance for the digital age

Building on a strong infrastructure, NOW IT develops strategies for the digital future of German pension insurance. Its goal is to make the digital everyday lives of millions of people – including its 700 employees – simpler, safer, and more efficient.

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60
%

reduction in Service Desk calls per month

80
%

reduction in tickets
issued due to problems
and disruptions

17500

devices expected to
be using uberAgent
this year

Bringing standardization and risk
protection to a hybrid workforce

When it comes to adopting leading edge technologies, culturally speaking, the pension insurance sector has been somewhat behind the curve.
Yet, ensuring that pensions are critically paid, and that its services comply with strict federal agency audits and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are priorities for NOW IT and the companies it serves. A key challenge for Mathias Wieczorek, Technical Lead at NOW IT, is managing the technical and internal complexity of geo-redundancy, i.e. distributing data, applications, and infrastructure across multiple geographic locations to ensure high availability and disaster recovery. “It requires coordinating with staff and pension companies, who often have different cultures and approaches,” explains Wieczorek. “The focus is on making sure everyone understands how to handle these situations and what can be done to maintain smooth operations.”
Wieczorek joined NOW IT in 2021, bringing with him considerable experience of working with Citrix and a determination to expand its landscape across this public sector environment.
Indeed, many of its combined workforce of 17,000 staff enjoy hybrid-working capabilities supported by Citrix. “The current scenario is very much a mixed bag of tricks,” says Wieczorek, who aims to increase the 4,000 employees currently working on Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to embrace standardization, boost efficacy, and manage things centrally.
“That’s where I’m trying to make inroads at the moment,” adds Wieczorek. “To up those user numbers by showing colleagues – especially in the east of Germany where internet connectivity is very slow – that they can work more comfortably and efficiently.”

I can evaluate very positively what Citrix currently does for us — and I hope that we’ll be able to go into the cloud somewhat more. That would be a great development.”
- Mathias Wieczorek,Technical Lead, NOW IT

Enhancing performance and security through the cloud

Already, Wieczorek’s development of the Citrix environment has had positive results. By using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, NOW IT ensures a consistent work environment for staff; regardless of the location they’re working in or the device they’re using, they access the same secure desktop setup. This approach prevents data from being transferred to and stored in personal devices, keeping all critical files and information securely in the data center. NOW IT is also exploring additional security features of the Citrix platform, such as anti-key logging and anti-screen capturing, to further enhance data security.

Performance remains high, as applications run directly from the data center, ensuring fast and reliable access to necessary data. While centralizing sensitive office documents minimizes security risk, those who are not using the published desktop system are inclined to encounter issues that those on it don’t face.

The goal is to move away from the current patchwork of varying setups towards unifying and improving the overall user experience.

“Citrix has helped NOW IT enormously with its consulting service support. Selective operational support and help with the strategic planning and conceptualization of the CVAD site consolidation have been invaluable throughout this project,” says Wieczorek.

Citrix’s advancements in multimedia handling have enhanced its reliability as a tool for enterprise-level communication and collaboration. This has led to NOW IT using Citrix full desktop more comprehensively for large-scale collaboration, video conferencing, and multimedia use cases. “Two years ago, that wasn’t possible,” says Wieczorek. “And it further demonstrates why we should be working with Citrix full desktop much more comprehensively.”

Bar chart showing ticket volume virtualization from Q1 2021 to Q2 2023 across six categories.

Data monitoring across every device

Thanks to the current Citrix landscape, NOW IT has seen an 80% reduction in tickets issued due to problems and disruptions. “That’s one of the biggest successes we’ve had because it takes the burden off all the colleagues,” says Wieczorek. “And user satisfaction is greater because we can ensure a quality of performance that we just didn’t have before - even if things fail, like migrations.” Service desk managers and staff who’ve seen a significant change in their daily business have thanked Wieczorek and his team for the modifications they’ve made. “Calls to the service desk have reduced from around 1,000 per month in 2021, to 400 per month on average today,” explains Wieczorek.”.

Recent changes within Citrix have significantly boosted efficiency. Wieczorek is now seeing results much faster, with streamlined concepts that are clear, concise, and highly effective - without the need for overly complex, lengthy documentation. “The migration from v1912 to v2407 has made NOW IT successful thanks to improved stability in a complex environment, better performance, and greater compatibility,” explains Wieczorek. NOW IT has also achieved a reduction in operating costs. And steady access to expertise and swift problem resolution has been a crucial development, making collaboration smoother and more effective.

uberAgent is very efficient and very self-explanatory – without knowing the product you can get results very quickly. For every application it shows which resources are being used, how performant they are, and where the bottlenecks occur.”
– Mathias Wieczorek, Technical Lead, NOW IT

uberAgent providing the path to observability

Meanwhile, Wieczorek’s understanding and appreciation of Citrix uberAgent has driven his lobbying of the solution at NOW IT. “uberAgent is very efficient and very self-explanatory - without knowing the product, you can get results very quickly,” he says. “For every application it shows which resources are being used, how performant they are, and where the bottlenecks occur.” Micro segmenting in the network is a hot topic for Wieczorek’s team, requiring configured security devices above and beyond what a firewall can do. Introducing uberAgent ESA (Endpoint Security Analytics) to security teams, Wieczorek worked with them to develop proof of concept systems. Over two months they identified overloaded servers that users were unaware of, highlighting the need for action.

As a result, the application of uberAgent ESA has been mandated to all end devices. This will allow for device data monitoring, not only to identify missing patches but also to understand the underlying security guidelines and potential risks of non-compliance. “Essentially you get a security report for every device,” says Wieczorek, who is confident that once uberAgent’s clear advantages for monitoring and security become widely apparent, more server users will elect to install the solution.

The roadmap ahead

Wieczorek anticipates that uberAgent will be across 17,500 end devices this year. “We can prove with uberAgent what’s appening and where,” he says. “Otherwise, it will be difficult to problem solve because if there’s ever an issue, something in the network will simply not work or disappear.”

Wieczorek understands that the better a network can be monitored and understood, the more effective he and his team can be. “Being able to set boundaries and find the source of the issue is really important when you need to make complex changes,” he says. Parts of the core application at NOW IT are destined for a third data center that doesn’t yet exist, and there is much work to do on the infrastructure to understand and deal with the complexity of that. “That’s what we’re hoping uberAgent will help us with,” adds Wieczorek. “It lets us be proactive and do things centrally with relatively little effort.”

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