For the first time the new BORUSSIA PARK brings all the parts of Borussia VfL 1900 Mönchengladbach GmbH together in one place. Apart from the imposing stadium, the 210,000 square metre club site is home to a museum, a sports bar, a fan shop and, last but not least, extensive training facilities. The club’s administration department used the change of site to undertake a radical upgrade to the IT infrastructure. With the introduction of thin client workstations the economic viability, availability and security of the IT environment could all be improved.

New server-based computing infrastructure
Before the move there were some 45 NT-based PC workstations in the club’s administration department. These were first of all incorporated into a server-based environment under Citrix and then gradually replaced by thin clients provided by the German manufacturer, IGEL Technology.

“The new IT workstations will save space, last longer and be cheaper,” reported Frank Fleissgarten, Head of IT and data Processing at Borussia Mönchengladbach. “It was also vital that configuration and administration costs were kept as low as possible.” New applications were to be installed centrally for all users and not have to be installed locally on each individual workstation any more, which takes so much time.” In order to ensure that the business-critical online ticket sales system was available at any time, five new terminal servers with Windows 2003 Server and Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 were installed. Today the club’s administration department runs 25 servers in all. Using load balancing, the load on the individual servers can be varied. Except for a few special cases, all applications run centrally on the Citrix servers, including Microsoft Navision, Microsoft Office and Acrobat Reader.

Thin clients also come into their own as point of sale terminals
There are currently some 150 IGEL thin clients operating at Borussia Mönchengladbach. After they were installed quickly and easily, making savings in administration, the efficient terminals have since also been installed in the satellite stations. Today, sales are dealt with exclusively by thin clients at the four ticket counters, each with eight stadium workstations, in the megastores as well as in the static and mobile fan shops. “IGEL thin clients have no mechanical parts like fans or drives and are therefore very reliable. A thin client will last, on average, between six and seven years - about twice as long as a PC. In order to increase availability still further we have at least one completely configured replacement unit for each model used that we can exchange immediately if necessary.”

The club uses the IGEL-3200 LX Compact at the ticket counters. Frank Fleissgarten says that the space-saving terminals with IGEL Embedded Flash Linux work well with the ticket printers: “There was no need to make any special modifications to the thin client firmware. In the fan shops we use the particularly economical basic models, the IGEL-Smart 216 and the IGEL-Smart 232 with Windows CE.“ Office workstations with simple image processing requirements are equipped with the powerful top model, the IGEL-5300 LX Premium, which features a DVI output, a 1 GHz VIA processor and 256 MB RAM amongst other things. The unit’s main memory can be expanded to 1GB.

Digital services: Smart card and management
A critical factor in the decision to opt for IGEL was not only the fact that the equipment was easy and flexible to use and could be configured as required but there is also the extensive range of digital value-added services – such as the management software – included in delivery and the support of smart card-based security solutions. The IGEL Remote Management Suite allows Frank Fleissgarten and his IT staff to administer all IGEL models remotely, easily and from a central location: “Thanks to IGEL’s intuitively designed management console we could create different configurations for the different areas of use. We can drag and drop the completed individual or group profiles into the new or replacement machines. Using the management solution, even firmware updates can be carried out automatically via ftp at scheduled times.

The solution IGEL thin clients with remote management software with no extra license costs Expectation to lower costs for the IT department has been fulfilled From the year 2000 to 2003 the IT-budget has been decreased by 5-10 percent per year although the business itself has grown in the same period

“The introduction of a personal smart card for each member of staff made accounting more accurate and more secure for the club. As all the IGEL models used by Borussia have an integral reading device, the smart card can be used all over the complex to assign access privileges, to identify staff clearly and also to be able to allocate sales specifically to individual members of staff.

“Differences in till balances have reduced significantly,” said Frank Fleissgarten, confirming that desired effect is being seen. “In order to prevent misuse of data, we can use the group and individual profiles to specify precisely the applications the staff have access to with their smart cards. For example, temporary staff employed on match days can only use the goods management system. The thin clients’ USB ports are always blocked.”

Rapid implementation
A tight schedule put the suitability of the new solution for daily use to a rigorous test. The first function test took place shortly before the move to the new stadium. “Everything had to be done very quickly,” recalled Frank Fleissgarten. “We tested three models from different manufacturers. IGEL’s thin clients proved to be the fastest, the most stable and the most flexible and were also very easy to operate. The simple configuration of the units ensured that the workstations could be converted rapidly. The test phase and roll out of the first 75 units only took two months. Today we run some 150 IGEL machines. We provide a thin client as standard for new staff.” Connecting more than one printer for each ticket counter represented a minor technical challenge. So as not to be dependent on the number of printer ports, season ticket printers, single day ticket printers, laser and work card printers were all connected logically via the network. Two newly installed print servers ensure that print jobs are processed reliably.

Continuous expansion of the solution
Migrating to a thin client-based infrastructure was a resounding success for Frank Fleissgarten. The club saves around
€ 46,000 a year in maintenance and support costs compared with a PC-based solution. If you include the hardware and software costs the savings amount to some € 60,000 a year. Excluding the investment for the new Citrix servers, the head of IT calculates that the whole investment will pay for itself in a year. The time saved in daily administration can be used for innovation. Currently PDA’s are synchronised via thin clients and image editing options are being further optimised. At the moment, 30 PC’s and some 20 laptops are still being used in the company for particularly graphics-intensive and mobile tasks. However, in the long term all fat clients are to be replaced in order to achieve a uniform workstation infrastructure throughout the company that can be managed centrally.

“By using IGEL’s thin clients we have been able to install an upgradeable, economic, ergonomic solution that fits perfectly into our new working environment and opens up to us more and more new application areas and options for process optimisation. I am certain that with more powerful thin clients we will soon be able to do without PC’s altogether.”