Together Into the Future: Bertelsmann Establishes Group-Wide Digital Workplace

The growth of the Bertelsmann Group has led to a wide range of solutions. The result was an IT landscape with over 100 on-premises domains and configurations for each IT workstation. Previous software distribution was complex and involved a great deal of effort. The use of different collaboration tools, a lack of IT standardization and automation and increasing competitive pressure led to high IT costs and made collaboration between the individual divisions of the Group more difficult.

To implement Bertelsmann's strategic priorities, Corporate IT, with the support of Arvato Systems, decided to use the Microsoft ecosystem. The aim was to reduce costs and bring corporate divisions closer together again. It was important that all companies at Bertelsmann should benefit from a uniform IT basis and retain sufficient flexibility for their own specific requirements. In addition, a productivity-enhancing IT workplace experience was to be created for every user in the company.

The integrated Microsoft 365 services form the core of the solution, with solutions such as Microsoft Endpoint Manager in use. Arvato Systems has harmonized the IT infrastructure within Bertelsmann and created the prerequisites for using the IT workplace-related services of the Microsoft Cloud. In addition, user synchronization in the Microsoft Cloud was ensured with a single sign-on solution. The on-premises Exchange mailboxes and SharePoint sites were migrated to Office 365 and services such as Follow-Me-Printing, WiFi network access, Windows 10 and iOS and Microsoft Teams were implemented. Network and security operation centers set up at Arvato Systems provide additional security for the IT services.