Nitto Denko

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Desktop Management Suite

Patrolling the PCs

Fed up with tedious methods of managing PC software licenses and security risks, plus a host of other problems, LCD components manufacturer Nitto Denko recently adopted Systemwalker Desktop Patrol, a desktop management suite offering from Fujitsu.

With less than 300 PC users spread among its business units in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, it seems that Japanese LCD components manufacturer Nitto Denko would not face massive problems in desktop management.

But they did. Or at least they used to.

In days of yesteryear, the company experienced numerous headaches while maintaining their PCs and ensuring that staff across geographical boundaries had access to common resources.

For starters, the company had copious amounts of hardware and software product information, which they had a hard time tracking. The company was also unable to monitor staff usage of these materials. Also, tasks such as software or file distribution – seemingly simple matters – were also proving to be tedious affairs.

To make matters worse, up till recently, processes such as updating computers with the latest security patches and virus definition files were done manually.

Yes, you read that right – manually. No wonder they had so many headaches.

On top of all these, Nitto Denko was also unable to monitor how the PCs were being used – for authorised purposes or otherwise – by the staff. The company also felt that, with stringent laws in Singapore to protect intellectual property, the employees need to be closely policed to prevent any worker from downloading or using unauthorised software.

Thus, in early 2006 the company decided to implement an IT-based tool to automate tasks such as license management, patch updating and security auditing. The job went to Fujitsu Asia, who proposed and eventually implemented the Systemwalker Desktop Patrol desktop management suite.

“We chose Fujitsu Asia as the systems vendor because they could offer vendor support in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. This is crucial because we have operations in these countries. In addition, Systemwalker Desktop Patrol comes reasonably priced and has all the functionalities we needed, so it was an ideal solution for our needs,” said Mr Yutaka Aoki, Regional MIS Engineer, Nitto Denko (Singapore) Pte Ltd.

Examples of functionalities are security auditing, license management, operations logging and file encryption.

Adopting a staggered rollout regime, Fujitsu implemented Systemwalker Desktop Patrol for Nitto Denko’s Singapore operations in February this year, before doing likewise for the company’s Philippines and Indonesia operations in June and September respectively.

“Although each Nitto Denko branch had dedicated servers in their respective countries, we decided to configure the solution such that the individual offices could share inventory reports and other materials through the integrated console located in Singapore. This allows faster and more efficient access to common resources,” said Ms Mardiana Yus, Consultant, Systemwalker Regional Support Center, Fujitsu Asia Pte Ltd.

“We took less than a week to rollout the initial phase in Singapore. Considering the fact that the initial rollout phase of any project generally poses more problems than subsequent phases, we are pleased that the implementation was smoother than expected,” she added.

Ever since the implementation, most of Nitto Denko’s headaches have disappeared. Apart from being able to conduct PC audits from the central server, the company can also:

• automatically install security patches or distribute software to specific PCs
• remotely view the installed hardware and software in any PC
• closely control and monitor PC usage levels and patterns

Nitto Denko had occasionally experienced intermittent problems such as server congestion or high CPU usage levels in the early days of the operation. However, these problems are solved by Fujitsu’s support engineers The company also receives patches from Fujitsu from time to time, which are then duly installed in the server.

The next phase of the project involves installing Systemwalker Desktop Patrol for the company’s Thailand operations. The rollout is expected to start soon.