Wolfsburg commissions COMPAREX Global Services to help connect 20,000 pupils at 60 schools to the municipal network

The classrooms and staff rooms also needed to have a local network and had to be connected via Wobcom, the local municipal network provider. Wolfsburg municipal authorities, as the project's main financial backer, is investing some 11.4 million euros in the project, which will extend the information and communications capabilities for the 20,000 students and hundreds of teachers and administrative staff. This sum also covers active and passive networking within the 60 schools.

The remaining ten percent is being provided by the State of Lower Saxony. Since June 2001, the experts from COMPAREX Global Services have been giving the Wolfsburg municipal authorities their full support in implementing this ambitious project entitled "The Wolfsburg model for the future of new media in schools".

A highly integrated software environment

The highly integrated solution involves a number of factors: The applications made available to the users at the schools employed Citrix technology based on Microsoft Windows 2000. The Sun ONE messaging server is used for the back-end e-mail infrastructure while the schools' administrative staff use Microsoft Outlook Express or Outlook 2000 as the front end. All applications and services were placed on a single central directory system, the Sun ONE directory server, into which other system directories such as those of the existing Legacy systems could later be integrated. The Windows 2000 functions are performed in parallel via the Active Directory internal directory system. Administration and user support is regulated centrally, but is provided locally by the teachers.

COMPAREX Global Services configured the entire installation as a portal solution with a standardised, straightforward interface for all users and with Sun ONE portal and web servers. "This means that all the Wolfsburg schools can access joint communication platforms such as virtual staffrooms, discussion forums, newsgroups, the e-mail platform and document and knowledge management using a single standardised browser interface," explains Wolfgang Beuermann, Manager of the IT Service Center in the Wolfsburg computer centre and the project's technology leader. In future, the students and teachers will also be able to use this all-inclusive portal system on the move thanks to the Sun ONE Mobile Access Pack portal.

A sound hardware base

More than 70 servers form the high-performance hub of Wolfsburg's groundbreaking system. These consist of Fujitsu-Siemens systems (Solaris Prime Power N400 + Primergy) as e-mail, web, portal, Active Directory domain and proxy servers, and HP systems (LP1000R, LP2000R, LC2000) as Citrix (49 in total) and XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) servers. The Citrix servers and Sun ONE e-mail servers, together with the file, print and firewall servers (Checkpoint Firewall-One) which are also used in the project, were clus-tered in order to boost their availability and performance. Efficient bandwidth management over long-distance con-nections has been thought of too. It is managed by Packeteer switch systems which transfer application data in preference to print data. For the switch and router sys-tems needed to expand the local Ethernet in-frastructures, Wolfsburg municipal authorities made use of the existing framework agreement with Cisco Systems.

Security built in

Users can also rely on secure system access. The firewall blocks all unauthorised queries. An additional virus and content scanner protects against viruses and Trojan horses and removes unauthorised web contents and e-mails.

The portal server with its access control, including socks and HTTP reverse proxy, also protects the Citrix systems. Appsense from Appsense Technologies is also used and is located on the Citrix servers. The security software protects against viruses, executable scripts and the loading of unlicensed software. A state-of-the-art SSO (single sign-on) which checks all accesses against the centralised set of rules for the directory system was implemented specifically for access control. A central SAN (Storage Area Network) ensures high availability of school data, e-mail accounts and directory data. Its capacity of 3.3 terabytes ensures ample data space for the future.

Project forges ahead

Under the leadership of COMPAREX Global Services the project was started in November 2001. By the end of March 2002, after completion of the first project phase, 14,000 students at 40 schools were linked to the municipal network. This figure will soon be 20,000 students at 60 sites, together with 1,800 teachers and 120 administrative staff.

The second project phase is already well underway and its aim is to ensure that central web hosting, hosted newsgroups, virtual staff rooms and mobile access can all take place via portals.

Mr. Beuermann, who is extremely pleased with the project so far, predicts that the whole project will be finished by October 2002. He is optimistic about the future from then on. "The complete IT infrastructure will then also be able to handle Wolfsburg municipal authorities' e-government activities."