Thüringer Aufbaubank

01. challenges

The more recent history of TAB is one in which many people will find themselves. When the coronavirus pandemic took hold in spring 2020, a company that previously had little or nothing to do with remote working suddenly found itself working from home. That changed a lot. “It was basically possible to work, and the VPN solution set up at short notice was great for this,” says Nico Kutschke, IT Services Team Leader at TAB. “However, the availability of colleagues was severely limited and was mostly restricted to emails and phone calls. Meetings were limited to the most necessary and high-priority topics. The remaining topics were neglected and everyday working life was made much more difficult.”

These missing meetings were a serious setback and a major obstacle, as TAB employees attach great importance to “an open, respectful and honest culture of discussion”. They were used to being in conversation, holding meetings on site in meeting rooms. A reliable, secure and uncomplicated solution that would also allow this to take place online had to be found as quickly as possible. “We were actually looking for a way to conjure up such a solution ourselves. Initially, we discussed hosting and operating Jitsi ourselves. However, we quickly realized that this would be a mammoth task and that we lacked both the know-how and the time for it,” says Nico Kutschke.

02. solutions

The open source video conferencing platform Jitsi in conjunction with a SIP gateway for telephone dial-in was the technical solution of choice. Users have access from virtually any device, HD video and voice run smoothly even in larger groups. Screen sharing and collaborative editing of documents are easily possible. The TAB IT team ruled out other comparable technical options “due to data protection problems, high costs, insane license models or complicated integration”.

Once they had found each other, it quickly became clear that NETWAYS would be the partner of choice for hosting and operating Jitsi. “NETWAYS made a very competent impression, which has been confirmed,” says Kutschke. “Committed, fair and methodical. And the focus on open source and the offer to run Jitsi as IaaS are very lucrative.” All Jitsi instances at NETWAYS are located completely securely, distributed across two ISO-certified data centers in Germany. The application can be set up and started within minutes. NETWAYS has won the trust of TAB primarily thanks to the high level of commitment and initiative of its employees. “Mr. Mimietz and Mr. Rothlauf have moved worlds.” The implementation process then took place “almost by itself. We only had to do a minimal amount of work.”

This has given Kutschke and his team enough time and freedom to concentrate on other important tasks, such as the ongoing operation of the remaining infrastructure and enabling employees to work remotely with the help of remote access, terminal servers and VPN.

03. success

Jitsi is now heavily integrated into the day-to-day work of the Thüringer Aufbaubank. Almost all meetings take place there. In addition to regular meetings, divisional meetings, crisis teams and management meetings are also held via Jitsi. This is also noticeable in the reduced utilization of meeting rooms. Equally pleasing: the video conferences with Jitsi have even significantly improved external communication.

“I hardly ever invite people to face-to-face meetings anymore,” says Nico Kutschke and is pleased that online coordination also works very well and that employees working from home are well integrated thanks to Jitsi. Visions can also be communicated and promoted very well via video – safely, cost-effectively and easily.