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Port of Antwerp replaces Citrix with Awingu
Port of Antwerp (Havenbedrijf Antwerpen) plays an important role in the daily operation of the Belgian port. Their 1500 employees manage and maintain, among other things, the docks, bridges and locks of the second largest port in Europe. They are also responsible for towing and dredging work in the docks. In order to make remote working for their administrative staff safe, simple and efficient, they replaced their Citrix environment with Awingu’s digital workplace.
Homegrown Citrix alternative
In the past, teleworkers and people in the field at Port of Antwerp used Citrix as a solution to gain access to applications and documents.
"We were no longer completely satisfied with Citrix. We feel it is a very complex solution with many different servers. In addition, we found that the licensing model used was no longer in line with the added value for our limited user population. That's why we started looking for a simpler alternative".
Stijn De Bont
System Administrator, Port of Antwerp
The Port Authority took a look at Awingu, and decided to study the digital workplace with a focus on simplicity and safety. “We first made a comparison with another solution,” says Stijn, “but a lot of the workspace functionalities we were looking for were missing. For example, it wasn’t completely HTML5-ready, there was no multi-monitor support and True SSO. These were all functionalities that were high on our wish list”. When comparing Awingu with Citrix, Port of Antwerp came to the conclusion that Awingu was the better choice, given its simplicity in both management and use.
"Simplicity is a core value of the Port Authority, which is why we are always charmed when we find it in management software solutions. What's more, this simplicity means that we have much more time for other innovative projects, something that is in the DNA of the Port Authority."
Erwin Verstraelen
Member of the Executive Committee, responsible for digitisation and innovation
Extensive security tests
A company like Port of Antwerp manages and processes a mass of sensitive data. Data security is therefore of the utmost importance, and they wanted to prevent it rather than cure it. That’s why Yannick Herrebaut, Port of Antwerp’s Cyber Resilience Manager, ran extensive tests on the Awingu software to make sure that Awingu’s “Zero Trust, zero complexity” mantra was right.
The digital workspace passed all tests without any problems. “An additional advantage of Awingu is that our external IDP integrated seamlessly within Awingu. This allowed us to take full advantage of the built-in SSO capabilities to give our users easier and safer access to their applications and files,” says Stijn.
Awingu within Port of Antwerp
Currently, the use of Awingu at the Port Authority is twofold: on the one hand, home workers and remote workers (mostly administrative staff) are given secure access via any device to their data and applications. On the other hand also for the use of applications that send a lot of data over the network and then typically become very slow via an ordinary VPN solution. The latter is not a problem with Awingu, because there the data transfer is limited to the pixel rendering of the workstation. In addition, there are applications at the Port Authority that simply do not work over VPN, which Awingu brings to the end user without any problems. Awingu is also used to give access to technical applications that run on a server to which only certain users have access.
Product Enquiry
Tel: (65) 6296 4268
Email: sales@version-2.com.sg
Product Enquiry
Tel: (65) 6296 4268
Email: sales@version-2.com.sg
