Modern and secure IT infrastructure with operational services for Arkance Systems CZ

Arkance Systems CZ (formerly known as CAD Studio) offers software solutions and services that help customers in the Czech Republic and abroad in the digital transformation of the entire life cycle of engineering projects - from design to production or construction and subsequent operation and maintenance. The company employs more than 130 specialists and developers who have been helping companies achieve their goals for more than 30 years. Arkance Systems CZ is currently the largest Central European partner of Autodesk. They have the highest status of Autodesk Platinum Partner. They are specialists in delivering CAD/CAM/CAE, BIM, GIS/FM and PDM/PLM solutions for engineering, construction and architecture, mapping, linear construction, 3D visualization, document management and asset management.

Not so long ago, CAD Studio was still part of the AUTOCONT Group. However, the French holding Monnoyeur showed interest in the type of business carried out by CAD Studio, for which Arkance Systems CZ later became a significant acquisition. This meant a big challenge in the area of migration of both physical infrastructure and IT services that were used through AUTOCONT.

Arkance Systems CZ has a total of approximately 150 employees with offices in six cities across the Czech Republic and one in Bratislava. The largest ones (in Prague, Brno and České Budějovice) have about 30 people each.

The intention was to choose an approach that would make it an independent company with more branches. The requirement for branches was thus the first important aspect in the choice of technology. There was a need for multiple branches to be easily managed, ideally from one location, by one solution. Another important requirement was for the customer to have most of their important technology in the cloud. The chosen technology should not only be able to work with the cloud, but also actively communicate and preferably be directly managed from the cloud. The third requirement was greater security, as clients should be able to access their applications from anywhere and the selected technology should be able to protect the client even if it is outside the corporate network.

To meet all requirements, we offered a comprehensive SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solution, our own security suite consisting of Cisco Meraki, Cisco Umbrella and our IT monitoring services. Cisco Meraki provides solutions that are developed to be managed easily through the cloud and are ready for branch growth today with the SD bank option. So all branches can be managed from one place and existing templates can be used if a new branch is added.

Cisco Umbrella works very closely with Cisco Meraki and connecting the two technologies is very simple. When the device is in the internal infrastructure, Cisco Meraki, specifically the Meraki MX exit gateway, takes care of all the protection and security. However, once the device moves beyond the internal infrastructure (open Internet, home, outside corporate environment), the Roaming Agent, a module on the endpoint device, is activated and starts to emulate the exit gateway function in software. Thus, the device is under control at all times and the inspection takes place in Umbrella as it does in the internal infrastructure. This solution thus offers simplicity, the possibility of using the cloud and one unified security.

Another advantage of this package is that the customer owns everything, unlike a NaaS (Network as a service) solution. Thanks to the shared access to the cloud, the customer does not lose control over the group of devices acquired by him, on the contrary, he has full access to the Dashboard as the primary user and can see his clients' communications, branch statuses, the topology plotted and the activity of resolving any incidents (tickets) entered on his behalf by us.

The whole design of the Arkance Systems CZ network was chosen from the beginning knowing that it had to be an easily manageable, accessible and secure entity and that is exactly what our SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) set has done. Security as an integral foundation.