Belgian Army proceeds with planned expansion of Infra software

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November 24, 2000

The Belgian Armed Forces has expanded its use of Infra support software to the internal helpdesk and Human Resources department of its Telecommunications division (BEMILTEL), EMC Infra announced today.

Following an initial deployment in early 2000 to manage Telecommunications network errors, new installations and internal IT, this latest implementation is part of a planned expansion of Infra software throughout BEMILTEL, with anticipated future use in the wider Belgian Armed Forces. The Army's Telecommunications network connects approximately 40,000 personnel in barracks across Belgium.

The maintenance and continuing development of the network is critical to the Army, which relies on it for everything from internal administration and training exercises, to coordinating activities related to Belgium's commitment to NATO and EUROCORPS initiatives.

Before the implementation of Infra, repair and development work in BEMILTEL was distributed by means of paper work orders. These were entered into a local database at BEMILTEL's National Control Center (NCC), however, this only enabled work to be followed up administratively once it was completed, not tracked in the system as it progressed.

Under this system, there was no way for the NCC to check the history of a work order, as well as no statistics, and therefore practically no means for senior commanders to assess and control work that was the responsibility of their departments.

This presented both an internal organizational problem for BEMILTEL, and a strategic problem for the Belgian Army with, for example, training exercises needing to be postponed because network lines were not in place in the required time.

BEMILTEL was specifically looking for a system that could be implemented quickly within its own divisions, while at the same time being sophisticated enough to handle anticipated future applications across the entire Belgian Armed Forces.

The potential scale of the deployment in the longer term meant that BEMILTEL was keen to retain control of the installation and configuration of the system, rather than being dependent on external consultants. Because military personnel tend to move between sites, BEMILTEL wanted its officers, once trained in Infra, to be able to transfer the knowledge to other groups.

As such, the implementation created a blueprint for future deployment. A combination of Infra's help desk and

change management

software was deployed into BEMILTEL, with web connection for remote access.

Change management stencils handle BEMILTEL's everyday procedures, designed to be adaptable to the circumstances of the divisions in which they are used.

Infra's help desk software manages the reporting and dispatch of network and internal problems, while the Infra screen design and advanced reporting modules enable BEMILTEL to easily design its own reports and screens.

BEMILTEL's commanders use Infra's Monitor module to take a 'snap-shot' of the current status of all work being undertaken by BEMILTEL. According to the Commanding Officer of BEMILTEL (Major Maene), "Infra provides a powerful and easy to use tool to cope with workflow management problems, both in a technical and administrative sense, and gives the opportunity to each layer in the chain of command to control the work done by his subordinates."

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