Ikomm, founded in 2003 in Lillehammer, Norway, provides high-quality ICT services to both the private and public sectors. They operate across multiple countries and serve over 40,000 users.
They have enriched their offerings with the digital workplace of Workspace 365, enabling users to collaborate efficiently and effectively, regardless of their location. This strengthens their position in the ICT sector.
Ikomm’s Citrix-based applications had become cumbersome, leading to subpar user experiences for employees. On top of this, as clients increasingly favored SaaS applications over on-premise setups, Ikomm needed to modernise its offerings to remain competitive.
Solution
Ikomm conducted internal and external proof-of-concept trials with Workspace 365, ultimately integrating it into their service portfolio. With Azure Single Sign-On and role-based access, Workspace 365 allowed employees to access only the applications they needed.
Result
Workspace 365’s easy access and simplified interface reduced complexity, improving employee productivity and engagement. End users could locate applications and tools with ease, freeing up Ikomm’s IT team to focus on more critical support issues.
Founded in Lillehammer, Norway in 2003, Ikommprovides ICT services to private and public sectors organisations that cover the entire value chain, from consulting and advisory support to managed services and on-site operations. The company supports over 40,000 users and operates in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland.
An established Microsoft partner, Ikomm manages both the core technology platforms and the way the technology is used in practice by the workforce. They like to operate and think in new ways to foster close collaboration with their customers by understanding how the services they provide deliver real value - and in so doing, they move from a traditional IT services supplier to a trusted technology partner.
The need for change
Since the company’s launch, Ikomm has developed a significant amount of business in the public sector and local government, where the continuous business focus is on customer service, cost efficiency, and employee productivity. Ikomm has its own datacentre infrastructure and its applications were traditionally written in Citrix, but when customers started moving towards more ‘off the shelf’ software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, the company realised it needed to reposition its services to meet the changing market.
Preben Abel, Strategic Partner Manager at Ikomm explains: “Around 2019, we started to hear from end users that their current Citrix desktops were becoming rather clunky and messy, and the employee experiences were not good. It was clear we needed to modernise our desktop and digital workplace solutions.
We’d been aware of Workspace 365 for some time and we contacted them to have a proper look at the product and how it might meet our needs.”
The company set up an internal proof of concept trial with Workspace 365 to assess how easy the product is to work with, and to experience the service as end users, prior to any formal partner arrangements.
Continues Preben: “What became immediately apparent to us was that Workspace 365 is browser based, so it doesn’t matter whether the underlying applications are SaaS based or on-premise server hosted – everything can be published in a single solution, with employee job requirements and secure application access rights taken into consideration.”
Ikomm act as the IT department for many public sector municipality organisations - managing their networks, providing consulting, project management, and hosting and managing the applications chosen by their customers. Proof-of- concept trials, both internally and with two external customers were implemented to ensure that Workspace 365 was fit for purpose.
“Workspace 365 was an ideal fit for us, it’s simple and it supports Microsoft Azure Single Sign-On - after secure login via a two-step multifactor authentication. And as the solution remembers your credentials, you have easy, hassle-free access all your services and applications."
Preben Abel, Strategic Partner Manager
Ikomm
Enhanced user experience - easy operability
Implementing and running Workspace 365 is both straightforward and flexible - and Ikomm easily adapted the solution to look and feel entirely native to their customers - enhancing the user experience and helping clients boost employee productivity and morale. They agreed commercial partner arrangements with Workspace 365 and bundled the product into their own solutions portfolio.
Says Preben, “Workspace 365 was an ideal fit for us, it’s simple and it supports Microsoft Azure Single Sign-On - after secure login via a two-step multifactor authentication. And as the solution remembers your credentials, you have easy, hassle-free access all your services and applications. It’s also very fluid and simple to manage for our operations department, and because of this, we save time whilst providing highly efficient management and customer support.
Internally we’ve decided to move to a full public cloud Microsoft Azure platform, and we’ve found that managing existing customers and on-boarding new ones is very easy regardless of the underlying technology. We’ve been seamlessly moving workloads ‘application by application’ – with no disruption to end users who have readily adopted the ‘easy to use’ digital workplace environment.”
A core function of Workspace 365 is the ability to manage employee application access levels based on their role in the organisation. Using active directory access groups, some employees are restricted to the systems they need - and nothing else, whilst more advanced users are given the freedom to customise the look and feel of their desktops to suit the way they work.
Partner Value
A real benefit to Ikomm has been a reduction in customer end user requests for help and support. Workspace 365 has simplified everything and employees are able to easily find the applications, systems, and processes they need. Additionally, the people who really need IT support are dealt with very quickly as the IT experts are not stuck on calls handling minor queries.
Concludes Preben, “We’ve found it very easy to wrap Workspace 365 into our own bundle of services that are based on a cost per month per user, and from the moment we saw the demo and ran our internal proof of concept and customer trials, the value of Workspace 365 was self-evident - we knew that it would fit perfectly into our portfolio as a value-added addition to our managed services.”
As the UK’s IT and Managed Services Provider market becomes increasingly competitive, differentiation and range of services will be key to increasing market share. Workspace 365 is an established partner helping many MSPs achieve this across Europe.
What is Workspace 365?
Workspace 365 isn’t just a platform – it simplifies the IT landscape. Helping you and your team tounlock the ultimate digital work focus, so you can concentrate on high-value tasks that truly make an impact.
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