Before the Covid pandemic, Diepenbeek's fleet consisted mainly of desktops. A limited number of laptops were available for use by staff on site visits. "No-one was working from home back then, that's for sure," says IT expert Raf Thewis. "That changed fast with Covid's arrival. From one moment to the next, everyone who possibly could started working from home. People worked on their own computers at first, as we simply didn't have any laptops available."
Personas
Diepenbeek's IT department soon found a suitable solution; Inetum-Realdolmen's WPaaS (Workplace as a Service). The local government bought 160 new HP devices, including over 100 laptops, along with various docking stations and monitors. "We were already familiar with HP," says Koen Rabijns. "We're aiming to maximize consistency."
The municipality's computer users operate in very different departments; from social welfare and housing to civil affairs, accounting or technical services. "We defined fourteen personas altogether," says IT manager Alain Jacobs. "Every employee gets assigned a specific persona depending on their job. That determines whether they receive a laptop or desktop and which applications will be installed." For now, new computers get ordered by email. Eventually, this will move to Rstore, Inetum-Realdolmen's procurement portal for IT products and services. Once the device has been bought, Windows Intune provides the required applications based on the user's persona.