The story of their success – a case study

By BMC Software

Seeking to provide employees, dealers, importers and others with centralised, policy-based access to information assets, The Volkswagen Group evaluated a variety of alternative Identity Management solutions.

“We have more than 600,000 users on our IT systems. Using the BMC Identity Management system, we know exactly who they are, their access rights and how that access is being used. When a user leaves the system, we can immediately revoke their usage rights, says Beckmann”

Following a rigorous benchmark, the company chose BMC Identity Management, concluding that it was the most flexible and comprehensive of the solutions they looked at.

The challenge
Pick any freeway, anywhere in the world, and the chances are you will very quickly spot a vehicle manufactured by the Volkswagen Group. The Group’s passenger car business is divided into two brand groups – Audi and Volkswagen – which, under the leadership of the Group, are responsible for the performance of their respective brand group worldwide. The Audi brand group comprises Audi, SEAT and Lamborghini, while the Volkswagen brand group is made up of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars: Skoda, Bentley and Bugati.

Each brand retains its differentiated brand image and operates as an independent entity on the market. Together, the product ranges extend from low-consumption small cars to luxury class vehicles. Added to this mix are the Group’s commercial vehicle products, which are the responsibility of the Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles brand.

Not only does this represent a diverse and distinguished set of brands, but then there is the geographical complexity to consider; the Group operates 44 production plants in 11 European countries and a further seven countries in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Around the world, nearly 345,000 employees produce over 21,500 vehicles or are involved in vehicle-related services on every working day. The Volkswagen Group sells its vehicles in more than 150 countries.

From a technology standpoint, almost every one of these brands – and many of the geographic operating subsidiaries – has traditionally operated its own, separate technology infrastructure. Today though, the watchword is standardisation. With a growing portfolio of brands, operating subsidiaries (which extends to Volkswagen Financial Services), and locations worldwide, the Group’s aim is to maximise efficiency through technology standardisation.

“In the past, each of the brands had their own technology strategy,” explains Professor Beckmann, Chief Information Security Officer, Volkswagen Group. “Our goal in the last few years has been to consolidate and standardize on every aspect of technology – and that applies to all of the technology that touches our staff, manufacturing, our suppliers, importers and dealers. Collectively, this amounts to more than 500,000 users of our IT systems.” Beckman adds: “The technology deployed in the organisation sometimes reflected its brand values as well: some focused heavily on high performance computing, while for others availability and reliability was the key goal.”

To ensure that everyone had access to the right information at the right time, The Volkswagen Group used to rely on a DB2-based identity management application, written for the mainframe environment. However, the client/server system, which managed up to 200,000 internal and external staff identities, was becoming increasingly outdated. Specific problems included the fact that it was batch-oriented, and relied on an old file transfer methodology. “The one thing you can say is that it was highly reliable,” adds Beckmann.

Centralised, policy-based access to information assets
With a mission to provide employees, dealers, importers and others with centralised, policy- based access to information assets, The Volkswagen Group evaluated a range of identity management solutions. Beckmann explains what was so special about BMC Identity Management: “We conducted a rigorous benchmark and concluded that BMC Identity Management was the most flexible and comprehensive of the solutions we looked at. It offers streamlined end-to-end identity management, addressing many of our most pressing identity management needs, including workflow, directory management, audit, self service, password management, Web single sign-on, and federation. It was also clear that BMC Software has the experience, global reach, and skills to help us achieve an effective global deployment.”

The Volkswagen Group is deploying almost the entire BMC Identity Management Route to Value suite of solutions. They comprise BMC Directory Management and Visualisation, BMC User Administration and Provisioning, and BMC Password Management.

The programme that the Volkswagen Group has embarked on is on a massive scale, involving more than 500,000 identities, thousands of applications, in up to 150 countries. The Group refers to the multi-phase, multi-year programme as AIM – Access and Identity Management. The first phase has been to migrate the existing DB2-based programme over to BMC Identity Management system. Using BMC Directory Management and Visualisation (tightly integrated into the BMC Identity Management Suite), the Professor and his team are in the process of consolidating multiple directory data and eliminating information discrepancy. The end result is powerful, scalable business applications based on aggregated directory content – and policies and privileges that are tightly aligned with the company’s staff.

During phase two, the team consolidated all of the data from the HR systems. Owing to the fact that Group HR data has traditionally been scattered across up to 250 legal operating entities – and just as many HR systems and applications again – this has been a significant task.

Simplifying user account management
Using BMC User Administration and Provisioning, The Group is simplifying user account management by integrating information about relationships, roles, and access rules into automated processes. This will help eliminate the security risks associated with administration activities, while also increasing operational efficiency and reducing expenses. Ultimately, Beckmann wants distributors themselves to provision systems. “With more than 5000 applications, we have a journey ahead to provision all the systems and attach them to AIM, but we are on track to achieve this,” he says. The next phase is to provide multi-lingual supplier and dealer self-registration for the thousands of dealers, importers and other suppliers.

The benefits of this showcase identity management deployment at The Volkswagen Group are evident: centralised identity management, reduced operational costs, and access, which is coordinated with business policies. “Without BMC Identity Management, we would have up to 2500 systems, each with its own user management. Compare that with having a unified, Group-wide security management system,” says Beckmann. “The cost to write an identity management solution for each separate system would be equivalent to €50,000. Based on this, we calculate that we will receive a complete return on our BMC Identity Management solution simply by deploying it on 100 systems.”

Cost aside, the BMC solution is also maximising the quality of security throughout the organisation. Beckmann continues, “On some systems we have as many as 80,000 suppliers. Using the BMC Identity Management system, we know exactly who they are, their access rights and how that access is being used. When a user leaves the system, we can immediately revoke their usage rights.”

And finally, of course, the BMC Identity Management solution takes the Volkswagen Group further down the road to business service management, by ensuring IT processes are prioritised according to business impact. He concludes:“With BMC Identity Management, we can begin to determine the impact of IT changes on business services. Knowing who has been affected has a dramatic impact on decisions we make about how to handle problem resolution and on how to meet service level and compliance objectives.”

About the Volkswagen Group

The Volkswagen Group is one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers and the largest carmaker in Europe. In difficult economic conditions, the Group increased the number of vehicles delivered to customers in 2005 to 5.243 million, equivalent to a 9.1 percent share of the world passenger car market. In Western Europe, the largest car market in the world, nearly every fifth new car comes from the Volkswagen Group. Group sales rose in 2005 to 95.3 billion euros (2004: 89.0 billion euros). Profits after tax in FY05 were €1.12 billion (2004: €0697 billion).

About BMC Software

BMC Software delivers the solutions IT needs to increase business value through better management of technology and IT processes. The company’s industry-leading business service management solutions help you reduce cost, lower risk of business disruption, and benefit from an IT infrastructure built to support business growth and flexibility. BMC provides best practice IT processes, automated technology management, and award-winning BMC Atrium TM technologies that offer a shared view into how IT services support business priorities. Known for enterprise solutions that span mainframe, distributed systems, and end-user devices, BMC also delivers solutions that address the unique challenges of the midsized business.
For more information please visit: www.bmc.com.