KIEN is a cooperative partnership focused on ICT in education. Thanks to the partnership with PQR, they can now support their members even better with ICT challenges. The transition toward the cloud has freed up more time and space among KIEN’s staff.
As a regional ICT partnership in the Drechtsteden region, KIEN manages the complete ICT environment for nine school boards in primary and secondary education, mbo and hbo. This partnership arose ten years ago from the need to pool expertise for innovation in digitization within education. The strength of this collaboration is economies of scale in cost, quality and vulnerability.
Work safely anytime, anywhere
“Approximately 25,000 students, students and teachers we provide with technologies that should always work,” says Tim Verlaan, director of KIEN. “Every day, we make sure that they can do their work safely at the 105 sites in the region anytime and anywhere. The biggest challenge remains the security issue, in which we have already made significant steps over the past five years. And we continue to take steps, including the central management of all devices in circulation, and there are quite a few. In this, PQR has helped us with VMware Workspace ONE, among other things.”
Comply with the Information Security Standards Framework
Safety is a broad term. For KIEN, this includes three main components: the human, the organizational and the technical. Employees must be aware of all risks and act the moment something happens. Organizationally, processes must be in place, such as management changes and setting up the central database that contains all devices that have been issued. In the technical part, KIEN strives for the ideal world where all devices are centrally managed and integrated so that they can be wiped and read remotely. These components are important for compliance with the Information Security Standards Framework launched in spring 2023 by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
“We are now focusing on innovations and smart solutions so that our services to members are future-proofed and that we are already meeting key standards within the Standards Framework,” Tim continued. “Thanks to the solution provided to us by PQR, we meet the critical standard for Central Data Management.” PQR provided KIEN with an integrated system in which data is managed from a central point, including the granted authorisations to issued devices with VMware Workspace ONE.
Collaboration
By choosing the Managed Services solution Workspace ONE, they are taking advantage of the flexibility and insights offered by the cloud. Tim: “With this choice, we have also put part of our service in the hands of PQR. They keep our systems up-to-date and secure. This gives our own people more time and space to work on location with our members. They now support more often in classrooms and with teachers with special requests that need extra attention. I think the most important thing in our collaboration is that we don’t want to and can’t do it alone and add value precisely where our members benefit.”