Initial situation
By using Beta Systems technology, Kommunale Informationsverarbeitung Reutlingen Ulm saves its clients, around 360 districts, cities, and municipalities in Baden-Württemberg, from printing tens of millions of paper pages every year. The changeover from the previous output management and archiving system Beta 93 for the mainframe to Beta UX for the open systems took place completely silently in the background for the customer.
Using modern software for citizen-friendly and paper-saving work in the specialist departments is often not very economical for small municipalities for cost reasons and due to a lack of specialist staff. That’s why there are companies like Kommunale Informations-
processing Reutlingen-Ulm. As a municipal area computer center, it obtains software
programs from the Baden-Württemberg data center and installs and adapts them on its own IT infrastructure. It then makes the functionality of the specialized procedures available to its 364 connected municipalities and district administrations in 13 counties in eastern Baden-Württemberg and takes over the complete data management – including printing and enveloping of mass printed matter.
The first IBM mainframe computer was installed at KIRU’s Reutlingen site in 1974. At that time, software programs for public administration were still predominantly developed on an IBM mainframe basis. For the storage of lists and reports as well as scheduling, Control-M and Control-D were used as supplementary products – until 2003, when the company switched to corresponding products from Beta Systems with Beta 93 and Beta 92.
Gerd Bölzle, responsible for print preparation at KIRU:
“Beta 93 was already in use in the Stuttgart area data center. Now that the data center landscape in our state is becoming more and more concentrated, we decided on Beta Systems as a supplier of mainframe-complementary software tools for the sake of standardization – and also for price reasons. With Beta Systems’ products, we were able to archive the job logs at the same time as the lists.”
The Challenge
During the transition from the mainframe to a client-server architecture in the area of municipal specialist applications, KIRU needed an output management system for Unix/Windows systems that would seamlessly take over and continue the tasks of the previous z/OS-based solution.
In order to reduce print volumes and enable its customers to work with less paper, the IT service provider was also looking for a web-based technology for administration-wide and application-friendly document access.
Implementation of Beta UX Suite at kIRU
kIRU Beta UX Suite: In technical operations, Beta UX is an invaluable aid for sorting and bundling the diverse and high-volume output from the various specialist applications and making it available to the municipalities in packaged form as clients of KIRU.
Postage optimization of the enveloped notices also plays a major role. The use of the Beta Web Enabler saves a large part of the previous printing costs, as the clerks have online access to lists and documents from their specialist applications and can display detailed information in the browser.
Solution
Beta UX is an invaluable aid in the technical operation of sorting and bundling the diverse and high-volume output from the various specialist applications and making it available to the municipalities in packaged form as clients of KIRU.
Postage optimization of the enveloped notices also plays a major role. The use of the Beta Web Enabler saves a large part of the previous printing costs, as the clerks have online access to lists and documents from their specialist applications via this web interface and can display detailed information directly in the browser.
