OPSI at Dr. Richard Linien

UIB und Siedl Networks: On the Right Track Together

The Dr. Richard Group is Austria’s second-largest bus company after ÖBB’s Postbus subsidiary and the largest privately owned bus operator in the German-speaking region. The group operates subsidiaries at 11 locations across Austria — including Vienna, Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, and Burgenland — as well as branches in Munich and Zurich.

In December 2021, the IT department at Dr. Richard began searching for a new software deployment solution for approximately 300 Windows computers. Applications and updates were to be distributed automatically to employees’ workstations across multiple sites.

Siedl Networks, based in Krems an der Donau (Lower Austria), has been successfully implementing open-source solutions for medium-sized businesses and organizations for many years, providing planning, implementation, maintenance, and support services. The Austrian IT service provider had already implemented a firewall at Dr. Richard in September 2021. When the bus company later inquired about a software distribution solution, the Siedl technicians recommended opsi (open System Integration) from the German company uib GmbH in Mainz.

All Aboard and Doors Closing

Several proprietary solutions were also considered, but in the end, the open-source opsi platform won the day. A decisive factor was the strong collaboration between service provider and vendor: while Siedl Networks’ technicians handled the installation and maintenance of the opsi servers, two developers from uib GmbH in Mainz worked on packaging the Windows software. Numerous applications — including industry-specific tools — needed to be packaged, making this a perfect task for opsi specialists at uib.

“With the open-source enterprise solution OPSI, we were able to meet all the requirements of Dr. Richard Linien. The growing demands were a particular challenge, but thanks to the professional collaboration between Dr. Richard Linien, uib GmbH, and Siedl Networks, we were able to respond and adapt to their needs.”
Philipp Sprung – Siedl Networks GmbH

Together with Dr. Richard’s IT team, Siedl Networks opted for the following setup: A central opsi configuration server is located in Vienna, supported by seven depot servers responsible for distributing the software. Two depots are in Vienna, with additional ones in Burgenland, Carinthia, Salzburg, Styria, and Munich.

The project officially began at the end of February 2022, and software packaging started in April 2022. Soon after, the first clients were deployed with newly built opsi packages. Packaging proved to be quite complex due to various dependencies, so the uib team categorized the software into levels such as “critical,” “urgent,” and “important.” After extensive testing, the new system went live at the end of 2022 — but the journey doesn’t end there.

The Road Ahead

Siedl Networks continues to support Dr. Richard’s IT team and the opsi infrastructure. In addition to training and onboarding for local administrators in Austria, further expansions of the setup are planned. In the future, opsi will also handle unattended installations of new clients. Beyond employees’ workstations, the company plans to integrate Windows and Linux servers into the environment and manage them centrally with opsi as well.

The integration of a monitoring solution and a web-based project management system is also on the roadmap. Both the service provider and the vendor remain ready to maintain and expand the existing opsi environment — ensuring that Dr. Richard Linien stays on the right track for years to come.