In an attempt to alleviate IT complexity, CapaSystems has been supplying solutions to the IT University of Copenhagen since 2008.
ITU has experience with our products that include, among other things, CapaInstaller, CapaPacks, CapaImages, and CapaWinUpgrade.
The IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) was established in 1999 and is Denmark’s leading university focusing on IT research and education. ITU deliver state-of-the-art teaching and research within computer science, business IT and digital design.
ITU’s modern campus in central Copenhagen is designed by the world-renowned Danish architect Henning Larsen.
2,647 students and 713 employees. Now that everyone has suddenly started working from home, the IT Department at the IT University of Copenhagen has been entrusted with quite the task: to secure an up-to-date and stable IT infrastructure.
In an attempt to alleviate IT complexity, CapaSystems has been supplying solutions to the IT University of Copenhagen since 2008.
We had a chat with Carl Widéen from ITU’s Client Management Team in order to hear about his experiences with our products that include, among other things, CapaInstaller, CapaPacks, CapaImages, and CapaWinUpgrade.
Surprised About User-Friendliness
Given that there are three persons in the Client Management Department, it does not take long for ideas to be put into practice when Carl Widéen and his colleagues work with software updates, Patch Management and PC roll-out via CapaInstaller.
When Carl Widéen joined the Client Management team back in 2019, he had not had any previous experience with a solution like CapaInstaller. But his first impression has set the framework for the way he currently works with CapaInstaller, and thus, he has become responsible for the PC part, whereas his colleague stands for the Mac part:
“I took over the PC part, because I have previously dealt with lots of IT support for PCs. So I just started to tinker with CapaInstaller, trying to pick up all the tips and tricks, and I quickly found out that it is a very user-friendly tool.”
One of the places where Carl Widéen can notice a clear difference in user-friendliness is when his colleague sends updates to those of ITU’s personnel who use Mac.
There are several clear differences both employees have grown aware of, including the lack of notification of new updates to Mac users. Therefore, Carl Widéen’s general experience is that CapaInstaller provides better service on a daily basis.
“CapaInstaller is very good at notifying users of updates. We can even customise what is in the information box, so users themselves can opt to defer
the installation several times. Users do not like being disturbed if they are, for example, teaching at the moment, so CapaInstaller contributes to alleviating their problems,” says Carl Widéen.
CapaInstaller Makes Our Daily Life Easier
Over the past year, the Client Management team has used Windows 10 In-place Upgrade (CapaWinUpgrade; red) from CapaSystems.
This has, among other things, helped raise satisfaction among the 300 administrative PC users who have CapaInstaller installed, and it is exactly CapaWinUpgrade that has transformed updates into a dynamic process.
CapaWinUpgrade also permits users to postpone updates a certain number of times before they are installed automatically, which saves time for the Client Management team, says Carl Widéen.
“CapaWinUpgrade frees us of the constant obligation to manually sit and keep track if computers are ready for being updated. While in the past we used to put them in an Upgrade package, this now happens automatically, and thus, there are certain features that are really cool. Also, I am not aware of the existence of such a feature in any other system.”
CapaPacks Automates Our Updates
Considering that the IT Department needs to juggle lots of balls in the air at the same time, ITU are diligent users of CapaPacks, as it saves them man-hours.
At the same time, CapaPacks helps the Client Management team keep standard user applications such as Mozilla Firefox and Filezilla up to date.
The applications are tested by the CapaFactory team at CapaSystems, which verifies the packages and updates before making them available to ITU, which in turn eases Carl Widéen’s workload, says he.
“CapaPacks allows us to be 100% certain that the various updates work, as there are sometimes updates that make an application suddenly crash or the like. But these are not the scenarios we are exposed to, which saves us time, as we do not have to do any troubleshooting ourselves.”
CapaInstaller Has Solved a Corona Bottleneck
As in other parts of society, the Corona pandemic has also had consequences for the IT Department at ITU.
With lecturers and researchers on furlough, the challenge has been to continuously keep their computers up to date so a lecturer’s computer does not start to update right in the middle of an online lecture.
Thanks to CapaInstaller, the Client Management team has set up a front-end server that makes it unnecessary for the 300 computers with installed CapaInstaller to connect to ITU’s VPN connection in order to update their software.
“As soon as the computer comes online, we are certain that the computer will receive Windows updates to the Patch Management part of CapaInstaller and that it will get the CapaPacks updates it is supposed to have. Not having to log on to a VPN connection really eases our work,” says Carl Widéen.
With a Focus on Security
Universities in Denmark have experienced an increase in hacker attack attempts, which is why security means a lot to ITU, and user applications are always up to date with the latest features.
“Since CapaInstaller can give us an overview of the versions of our computers, there is also a security perspective that ensures that our computers can have the latest updates, which is something that I value highly,” concludes Carl Widéen.
The Many Benefits
IT University of Copenhagen points out the following benefits:
- Security in focus
- Eases the workload for IT
- Major time saving
- Gives the overview
- Automates the updates
- Increases user satisfaction