Stiftung Fürst-Pückler-Museum Park und Schloss Branitz – Into the cloud with Cisco and Microsoft

Stiftung Fürst-Pückler-Museum Park und Schloss Branitz – Into the cloud with Cisco and Microsoft.

Prince-Pückler-Museum Park and Palace Branitz Foundation is one of the largest cultural establishments in Brandenburg. Its 620 hectare park near Cottbus is visited by around 400,000 guests each year, who enjoy the landscape gardening, the palace, museum and 30 buildings with exhibitions and gastronomic offerings. Bechtle digitalised the entire network infrastructure for the Foundation and providing the design, installation and configuration as well as operation, service and training for the move into the cloud. With products by Cisco Meraki and Microsoft Azure with M365, Bechtle opted for IoT, driving the Foundation’s digitalisation forwards and making it agile.

Project details.

Services

Networking Solutions
Cloud

Industry

Public sector

Manufacturer

Cisco, Microsoft

Company size

< 250 employees

Challenge.

The Prince-Pückler-Museum Park and Palace Branitz Foundation (known as SFPM) helps sustain the heritage of the late Hermann Prince of Pückler-Muskau. The extensive grounds of Branitz Park and Palace in the south-east of Cottbus are home to a total of 30 listed buildings where 55 employees, scattered throughout the park, work on 40 PC clients with their user profiles and e-mail addresses. Then there are another 60 user profiles for visitor reservations, tree data management, vehicles and the checkout counters. The IT devices are spread across the park and museum and the range of digital applications used is just as vast, ranging from office communication to accounting to event and collection management.

When an almost 200 year-old work of art with its widely scattered buildings, such an important cultural legacy and visitor services enters the cloud, it’s clear that this is going to be a big, challenging event and that it’s going to create ripples. Together with Bechtle, we worked on the blueprint, swiftly solving a host of challenges with great ideas. Today, all work done for the Foundation is cloud-based, mobile, digital, secure and sustainable. This way, the Foundation can effectively sustain Branitz’s long tradition, while ensuring a futureproof concept that enables employees to easily arrange work around family schedules and use the latest flexible working hours and models.

Dr. Stefan Körner, Director of the Prince-Pückler-Museum Park and Palace Branitz Foundation

Back in 2022, there were plans to move individual departments into a different building, but when the time came to modernise the existing IT systems from the ground up, the Foundation was looking for a partner that could analyse the existing IT infrastructure, optimise and come up with a futureproof solution for it. A partner that could provide, operate and take on full responsibility for information and communication technology services so that the Foundation can handle its statutory tasks even more efficiently. They envisioned a location-independent and service-oriented use of technology that was more efficient, secure and flexible than what was in place, combined with the innovative and responsible use of cloud technology. The digitalisation of all administrative tasks and documentation was financed by the “Branitz Master Plan” on the basis of a resolution by the German Bundestag. The tender for modernisation was awarded to Bechtle. Not only did the IT service provider overhaul the entire network, they consulted the Prince-Pückler-Museum Park and Palace Branitz Foundation holistically and went above and beyond the original requirements.

Solution.

Bechtle analysed the existing systems, applications and environments to comprehend what the exact goals and requirements of the Foundation were. Based on this analysis, Bechtle developed a solution for modernisation that would pave the way for cloud-based applications and external IT services. One central aspect of this new network was a new hardware infrastructure that saw Bechtle replace all desktop PCs with notebooks on which they installed all required applications while migrating data such as file storages and e-mail inboxes from the previous environment into the Microsoft Azure cloud. The Foundation now uses Microsoft 365 including Teams for video conferences supported by new webcams and headsets. In addition, Bechtle implemented additional security mechanisms such as single sign-on and two-factor authentication to keep the IT environment secure and enable the Foundation’s employees to work from home.

The network technology for the local area network (LAN) that connects different buildings and the move into the cloud were all realised seamlessly with products by Cisco Meraki. But Bechtle even went a step further. During consultations and on-site appointments, they became aware of existing camera systems and recommended replacing them with modern, cloud-managed security cameras from Cisco Meraki, which not only enhanced security for the park and palace Branitz, but also allowed extra services such as visitor counting. Bechtle also noticed the many plants cared for by the Foundation, the ambient temperature for which was previously managed manually. Using Cisco Meraki MT sensors and suitable IoT applications, the temperature and air quality are now monitored and controlled automatically. After the initial draft, installation and configuration of all new IT components, Bechtle trained the employees of the Foundation in how to use the new technologies and took on operation and service of their IT landscape for a period of five years, all while creating extensive documentation that would provide seamless operation and repairs of the new IT infrastructure.

Business benefits.

Together with Bechtle, The Prince-Pückler-Museum Park and Palace Branitz Foundation not only fundamentally modernised its IT infrastructure, but also paved the way for its advanced digitalisation with Bechtle’s continuous adaptation and innovation. The new cloud-based applications make employees more flexible and agile and hence efficient while the trainings and documentation make work a lot easier and new security procedures protect sensitive data and make sure that all data protection regulations are abided by. Ongoing evaluation and updates are also guaranteed. For this age-old cultural establishment, a digital renaissance has begun. There will be more digitalisation with Bechtle as the Foundation will most likely introduce Wi-Fi in their park and public webcams will make the Foundation more tangible and strengthen their digital footprint.