MICROSOFT SCCM IS BLOCKING YOUR FLEXIBILITY?

Application management and deployment rethought.

In a world where everything has to be faster and more flexible and things can change from one day to the next, you have to be able to rely on application provisioning and access within the IT environment. To meet the demands of users and administrators, it is no longer sufficient to rely on Microsoft’s SCCM.

To enable this flexibility, a groundbreaking end-to-end application management platform is needed. And that’s where Liquit comes in.

Liquit is an end-to-end application management platform that raises the bar for enterprise application solutions. Incredibly intuitive, highly flexible and technology agnostic, Liquit provides its customers with a competitive advantage that increases productivity, reduces costs and enables working from anywhere – essential in today’s marketplace.

Application management is a complicated and constantly evolving problem that IT teams have been dealing with for decades. With the multitude of variables in application deployment and hybrid IT environments, there are endless ways to get into trouble. The team at Liquit has decades of experience in dealing with such problems and is passionate about eliminating just such frustrations for businesses and end users. Since 2015, Liquit has been working to minimise complexity and make accessing and managing applications simple and intuitive.

Typical end users don’t care about the technological complexity of application deployment and management. They simply want to be able to access and use the applications they need, regardless of where they work or what device they use.

A case study from Hauzer Techno Coating shows how easy it is to make the switch and what the benefits are.

Liquit Delivers Easy Application Installation for a Booming Surface Coating Innovator  

IHI Hauzer Techno Coating is on its way to achieving its serviceability goal. 

• Customer: IHI Hauzer Techno Coating has been a pioneer in plasma coating equipment since 1983, providing various surface coating solutions for products in many major industries. 

• Challenge: With a workforce that relies on a variety of software accessible from anywhere, the company needed a self-service application installation solution that would be easy to use. 

• Solution: Liquit-as-a-Service provided the Hauzer IT department an easy and flexible solution to roll out a self-service installation and workspace option for its employees worldwide. 

• Results: While the complete Liquit solution is still in process, the company already sees substantial time and effort savings and positive feedback from employees. 

Hauzer Techno Coating

Hauzer Techno Coating is a pioneer in the advanced coating industry, with a mission to take a leading position in sustainable technologies. To get there, the growing company needs solutions like Liquit to help their globally-based employees work smarter and more efficiently with self-service capabilities.  

With a methodical approach to shoring up vulnerabilities and advancing technology capabilities, Hauzer IT Manager Michel van den Einden has set specific continuous improvement goals for the last few years. The IT department has been improving serviceability, which they identified as an important area. They also needed to improve the process for application approvals, installations, and updates in a major way. 

The team first explored the Microsoft Autopilot function of Windows as a viable solution for onboarding devices [EB1] without needing IT help desk support. They found the technology did not meet the expectations for ease of use and a uniform approach to installing applications. While internal scripting expertise enabled them to also try PowerShell as a potential solution, it did not meet the need for end user serviceability.  

Faster with self-service as a priority 

“The ideal application installation solution should be faster and be presented to the user in a way that allows everyone to help themselves,” says van den Einden. “We needed something different than Microsoft Autopilot or scripting to avoid the hell of application installation from an IT department perspective.” 

After initial conversations with the internal Hauzer IT team, Liquit chose their Netherlands-based partner, IT-Value to work on a proof-of-concept production and ultimately help with implementing the project. As recipients of the 2019 Liquit Newcomer of the Year and 2020 Partner Project of the Year awards, IT-Value was the ideal partner to help Hauzer’s IT team on this project. 

After reviewing the Liquit-as-a-Service capabilities, especially in application installation, van den Einden determined it met many of the objectives he was looking for and more. Some of these advantages include:  

• Cloud-based applications access — via the Liquit connectors 

• End user self-service — creating a uniform, fast and seamless way to install applications for all the company’s users without the need for a help desk ticket 

• Trouble-free deployment — especially with new application updates to the endpoints 

• Automatic updates — no need for IT resources to spend time on the constant stream of patches and updates needed for numerous applications 

• Doing more with less — it was vital to have a solution that could save time and money for a booming company with a small IT department and limited resources

Liquit is rolled out to the delight of end users 

Having vetted Liquit-as-a-Service, the Hauzer IT department deployed the solution to its worldwide end users with excellent results. This was especially true in the highly prioritized areas of application installation, easy use, self-service, and freeing up their IT department to focus on vital tasks and higher priorities. Hauzer onboarded the Liquit solution in May 2021. 

“My philosophy is rather than having software that is difficult to install or maintain, it should have software that you just set it and forget it,” says van den Einden. “It was my goal to maintain that kind of IT environment. I achieved this for a lot of programs with the use of Liquit as the workspace manager and connecting it to the setup store.” 

The Hauzer team opted for the cloud-based Liquit-as-a-Service versus an on-premises solution to give them the flexibility and ability to move some applications to the cloud, which was a real time-saver. Van den Einden explained how this establishes a completely automated approval and installation process for the end user to choose and get the applications they want and prefer to use in their digital workspace and devices:  

“The user doesn’t care whether the application is on-premises or cloud. It’s completely transparent to them. There’s no need to ask, ‘Can I have this program?’ or ‘Do you want to set up this license for me?’ We have the approval workflow running so I can okay an app and purchase a license for the user that we easily and quickly it up, so now I don’t have to do anything other than changing the shortcut in the workspace. Plus, the automatic updates provide an important capability that will yield more benefits as we move more and more to the cloud.” 

The company is still in what van den Einden calls the “first phase” where the Liquit solution is operational, with significant results coming in the form of positive feedback from end users early on after the deployment.  

“My end users are surprised and say, ‘this is so easy,’ or ‘this is really fun.’ They don’t need to wait because the applications are immediately available,” says van den Einden. “They don’t need to wait on IT to install the software they want or ask where it is because it’s there in the catalog. So, I can just forward them a ticket and tell them, ‘Here it is,’ and they can easily do it themselves, which works very well for everyone. 

It’s equally important that the solution has garnered rave reviews from the entire IT department, according to van den Einden: “It’s great to see that my team also loves Liquit because of the flexibility that empowers them to do so much with it so simply, which is a real time-saver.” 

“So, my philosophy is don’t install software. Don’t maintain software. Just have it, set it, and forget it.”  – Michel van den Einden, IT Manager, Hauzer Techno Coating 

“They don’t need to wait on IT to install the software they want or have to ask where it is because it’s there in the catalog. So, I can just forward them a ticket and tell them, ‘Here it is, try to help yourself.’ And it works. It just works.”  – Michel van den Einden, IT Manager, Hauzer Techno Coating 

“And for my team, it’s also good to see that they like Liquit. They love the flexibility that you can do so much with it. It’s a real time-saver.” – Michel van den Einden, IT Manager, Hauzer Techno Coating 

Can your company benefit from a game-changing, end-to-end application management platform? 

We can help you determine how you can gain advantages from application delivery, access and management that meet today’s need for anywhere operations, cost-effectiveness, and IT efficiencies.