IT International Newsletter No. 2

-- In den Auslandsbüros bitte an Ortskräfte weiterleiten --

Dear colleagues,

Are you still wondering what changes the much talked about IT project will bring to you and the international offices of FES? In this newsletter, we will give you an update on our rollout plan, introduce via video our new regional support team, share a podcast with tips on how to get specific Dell hardware in challenging countries, provide you with a glossary on IT terminology, and inform you about the future of VeraWeb.

Last but not least, we would like to announce the winners of the name competition in our last newsletter: Jonathan Menge and Joachim Schlüter were the very first to come up with “FESnet” which was voted the most popular suggestion. Ilhem Brini in Tunis receives the reward for the most creative idea. She suggested “Hydra” and we learned from her that the term refers to a stellar constellation linking the global North and South and resonates well in Arabic language. Congratulations to all three winners and now, read on, scroll down and enjoy our newsletter!

In our offices in Johannesburg, Santiago de Chile, Singapore and Tunis, we recently recruited a total of four IT administrators to roll out the new infrastructure in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Middle East regions. In April, we already had welcomed three new colleagues to the FES data center in Bonn, where they are responsible for providing the technical infrastructure for supplying the international offices with IT services. And in June, Juliane joined our team as financial and project administrator. Got curious? All new team members introduce themselves in this video.

Standardized hardware is essential for a successful implementation of our project (for an updated list of device specifications click here). However; the procurement of the required hardware can be challenging, especially in countries without official Dell dealers. For our podcast we spoke to Philipp Jahn in Khartoum about how he mastered this challenge; and we summarized five generic tips for procuring standardized hardware in this slide.

As mentioned in our last newsletter, the implementation of the IT project requires thorough preparation. With more than 100 international offices spread all over the globe, FES has a very far-reaching network; yet also a very diverse and heterogeneous one from an IT point of view. For our rollout plan, we have grouped all offices into regional and sequential clusters. Click here to find out what it means to be part of the rollout, to which regional support and rollout cluster your office belongs and which countries have been picked to become pilot offices.

Rollout, onboarding, single-network solution, web-based services etc. etc. Are you also confused by IT terminology? In this glossary, we briefly explain the most important features and terminology used for our project in four languages (German, English, Spanish and French).

During the course of the IT project, the VeraWeb contact database solution will be phased out. However, for offices currently using this system, the VeraWeb server managed by FES Brussels remains operational with full access to the software and data stored on it. After the roll out, the standard contact management software for the international FES offices will be based on Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.