EUROCONTROL Achieves Sky-High Success with Sun Java Enterprise System
Agency helps strengthen protection for the flying public
Air traffic management in Europe has benefited from the expertise and experience of EUROCONTROL, the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation. EUROCONTROL is an inter-governmental organization responsible for air traffic management in Europe. With headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, EUROCONTROL has more than 2000 experts dedicated to enhancing the safety, capacity, and efficiency of air traffic management.
In 2000, Eric Roelants, EUROCONTROL's project manager for communications for the Administrative IT Department, recognized that the organization's geographically dispersed and often mobile workforce needed a better solution for accessing IT resources and applications.
No two Web-based information services looked or behaved the same, and they often required multiple sign-ons and passwords. Without standardized access to resources and applications, workers found themselves spending too much time and effort just to get the information they needed to do their jobs.
What's more, the current security solution for Web-based applications was in dire need of expansion. Because EUROCONTROL's networks contain a vast amount of sensitive information, security breaches could be serious. The organization needed to take immediate action to ensure the highest degree of security for all users of the system, from passengers, governments, contractors, and partners to the wide population of EUROCONTROL employees, including those who were accessing confidential information remotely on laptops.
Seeking a Better Way to Provide Sensitive Information
EUROCONTROL knew that it needed a secure single sign-on portal solution, enabling personalized access to its legacy applications and services. In addition to saving employees' time, thus boosting productivity, such a system could also lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) for managing its application services infrastructure. After evaluating various vendors of technology infrastructure to support its business goals, EUROCONTROL selected Sun Microsystems.
Over a period of 18 months, EUROCONTROL worked with Sun consultants, along with Sun iForce Partner ACA IT Solutions NV, to design and implement a solution. The result is a single sign-on portal with integrated identity management services based on various components of Sun Java Enterprise System running on Sun Fire servers and the Solaris Operating System. Several other iForce partners also came into play. The RSA Security SecurID user-authentication system and Interwoven TeamSite Content Server round out the solution.
The portal solution allows EUROCONTROL to aggregate and provision content, applications, and services to more than 10,000 end users based on individual and group roles and responsibilities. The solution includes a security-rich infrastructure based on a single directory of users with access privileges clearly defined and administered.
Safer, More Efficient Air Traffic Control Services
The portal and identity management services solution is delivering dramatic results for EUROCONTROL. Bottom-line results include lower TCO. The organization is also enjoying higher system availability — thanks partly to ongoing technical support via SunSpectrum Platinum and Sun Software Premium Support agreements — and faster provisioning for users.
With such stellar results, EUROCONTROL has truly transformed its Web infrastructure to be responsive, secure, and reliable. And since this transformation, the productivity of the organization's constituents has improved.
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"Sun offered and delivered an end-to-end solution with security-rich features that supported the requirements of our highly mobile user base."
Eric Roelants,
EUROCONTROL Project Manager
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Sun Services Helps Solution Take Off
To develop the solution, Sun Services leveraged the SunTone Architecture Methodology for architecture design and implementation. This iterative architectural approach helps meet quality-of-service requirements while allowing concurrent development in multiple tiers. The separation of services into tiers also makes it much easier to make changes to one aspect of an application without requiring changes to other tiers.
Sun's support services were a major factor in gaining EUROCONTROL's confidence to proceed with the solution. The initial solution proposal included a SunSpectrum Platinum support agreement, which is designed for mission-critical environments. EUROCONTROL subsequently supplemented it with a Sun Software Standard Support agreement. The support contract — for both software and hardware — is designed to provide EUROCONTROL with 24x7 coverage.
As part of ongoing management support from Sun, the EUROCONTROL IT team taps Sun Services for regular online and instructor-led training. Periodic skill assessments provide EUROCONTROL with a means for gap analysis. In doing so, the Sun account team coordinates with Roelants and his team to ensure that appropriate training is delivered to fill identified gaps.
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"Sun Java Enterprise System not only delivers a lower total cost of ownership, but provides a highly flexible, adaptable foundation for addressing new business requirements," says Roelants. "Sun has demonstrated a long-term commitment to our business execution, and we are counting on its technology expertise and innovation for many years to come."
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"The ability to combine consulting, training, and support from Sun Services helped tie together all of the different pieces of the solution," says Roelants.
Sustaining Ongoing Cost Savings with Sun Java Enterprise System
In addition to identifying immediate cost savings from the $100 per employee pricing model and simplification in licensing management, EUROCONTROL believed Sun Java Enterprise System was the ideal infrastructure software solution for adapting to new business requirements.
EUROCONTROL is leveraging the Portal Server, Access Manager, Directory Server, and Web Server components of Sun Java Enterprise System. EUROCONTROL is considering integrating other components, including:
- Instant Messaging and the Portal Search Engine
- Sun Cluster software to build a high-availability clustered environment
- Application Server to make use of Java Web services
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