Meeting Evolving Demands in the Automotive Industry
The automotive industry faces rapidly increasing demands on Access Management due to complex supply chains, globally distributed enterprise environments, and heterogeneous application and development landscapes. These challenges have resulted in a growing number of applications, identities, and roles at OEMs and suppliers. Additionally, companies must meet strict security and compliance requirements, and the targeted time-to-market for their developments is becoming ever shorter.
“The management of identities and access rights in our industry is definitely becoming more demanding,” confirms Michael Helmlinger, IAM Team Leader at AVL. “Manually administered stand-alone solutions simply can no longer meet these requirements. That’s why we decided in 2018 to consolidate Access Management within the AVL Group and migrate to a modern and automated access management platform.”
Collaborating for Success with iC Consult
Recognizing the high level of integration required for such a solution, AVL decided not to undertake the project alone and brought in iC Consult Austria as an advisor and catalyst. The first step was to evaluate the Access Management solutions available on the market and test the most promising ones in a proof-of-concept. Subsequently, the most convincing solution was to be jointly implemented, rolled out to customers and partners, and as far as possible automated.
“We were initially skeptical whether an external partner would understand our challenges well enough to support us comprehensively on both a deep technical and strategic level,” explains Michael Helmlinger. ” However, iC Consult was able to dispel these concerns very quickly. After just three months, the team presented us with a proof-of-concept with a well-thought-out selection of vendors – and based on this, developed a well-fitting, vendor-independent solution together with us.”
Implementing an Agile, Automated Solution
Following the successful proof-of-concept, the partners jointly pushed ahead with the implementation and roll-out of the solution. Christoph Hartmann, Lead Consultant, recalls: “To be able to flexibly implement customer-specific requirements and new challenges at any time, we set up the project according to agile development principles. In this way, we integrated an enterprise-wide automated Access Management platform for AVL that fully meets the high security, compliance, and performance requirements – and which could be implemented within the planned timeframe and budget.”
Automation brings Tangible Benefits
The new solution’s greatest advantage is its high degree of automation – for example, in the largely automatic integration of new applications or the automated management of the identity lifecycle. This sustainably relieves the AVL team from time-consuming routine tasks during configuration and operation, creates valuable scope for the further development of their projects, and significantly improves the efficiency of IT operations. In addition, automation eliminates many potential errors from manual interventions and allows processes to be documented transparently, which benefits security and compliance.
Conclusion: A Strong Foundation for the Future
Michael Helmlinger’s preliminary assessment is correspondingly positive: “With the new Access Management solution, we have created a robust and sustainable foundation for handling our digital identities – with tangible benefits for both the users and the responsible IT team in the background. iC Consult has supported us competently from day one – with vendor-independent expertise, and a deep technical understanding, but also as a driving force in conceptual questions. This way, we have found a solution for every challenge and can continuously build on this foundation.”
