Celumium 2014 Joris Gruber .pdf

"An employee's physical location must not be the determining factor for the level of
information that he has and receives!"

The Dawn of Celum
Let’s look a few years into the past. The "big" marketing data was not used in any of the
main processes and lived its meager existence on various data carriers, mobile hard disks, or
in cupboards full of DVDs. Finding this data was only possible for a few, not to mention a
total overview.
The situation was just as bad for some storage formats regarding data security. This was a
treasure trove with a worth of much less than its usefulness. It was time to bring order and
security with a system, and so shortly after the turn of the millennium we started to evaluate
options and systems.
One of these candidates was Celum! At first inspection it was clear to us that this system
could be what we were looking for - but it was out of the question because it simply would
not fit into our infrastructure. After Rosenbauer had parted ways with Novell, a very
homogeneous Microsoft infrastructure was built up. So our central focus in 2003 was
certainly not to implement any system based on "non-Microsoft technology."
But just as we do not give up on innovations, we kept this system in focus. Unfortunately for our infrastructure - this alien system showed that it was the one we were looking for, and

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the only one which really overcame all hurdles of the requirements. We took a leap of faith,
and in 2004 we had the Celum image database in-house; and an Apache webserver!
At this time the media database was only accessible for the areas of equipment and
advertising. This is illustrated by a number from my project documents: In 2004 we had
three Celum users!
This suited the strategy at the time of centrally administering all data for the equipment
business area. In 2003 we produced a 400 page equipment catalog with thousands of
products in German and English!
Around this time, Celum started as a media database in this area and began to establish
itself. Bit by bit, byte by byte, and megabyte by megabyte the data was arranged, viewed,
and systematically stored in the system.
Being able to quickly and easily publish data was a real specialty at the time. Images and
image collection for journalists were released by PIN, and being able to offer print data as
well as a self-service print shop were genuine milestones at the time. Thus a very small
group of users worked very contentedly with the system. But the interaction or the data
exchange in-house with other areas or sites was still manual. It was also still a big effort if
images from different areas were needed together!
In 2005, I made note of the first growth stage in my project handbook. The media database
got its own physical server. At that time, two mirrored 136 GB FC hard disks were installed in
the server for the media data! The Users were of the opinion to easily manage in the coming
years with 130 GB of storage space. They were proved right for the next four years.
In 2009, the scope and the area of responsibility of the system were increased significantly.
On the one hand, the media data was moved to our central storage, so that we could
dynamically increase the storage space. We widened the user circle to all marketing areas inhouse, so now images from all company areas were copied to Celum. This in-house roll-out
was primarily a structural project.
The technical system just had to work!
We also deployed the Celum Webgate technology to publish certain images in-house. Here it
was demonstrated that the original objections to the system were completely justified, as
our users had become "accustomed" to Microsoft. They expected – whether for good or for
bad – the Microsoft user experience. The foundation for a later SharePoint integration had
been provided.
I can well remember topics like image rights. A hot topic for an IT process analyst, as this is
an issue in a similar form in IT – under the heading of data protection. It was a long and
winding path for these legal topics to work their way into the heads of users.

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Here too, the requirements on the system were simple. The system must be able to do it
and users have to learn it!
In parallel with this development, I built-up a powerful group communication platform at
Rosenbauer. Naturally, a 100% Microsoft solution!
In this area too, I was always looking for standard solutions, and so in 2009 I switched to
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, which had replaced our existing Extranet.
Two years later, in 2011, we were already able to migrate to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and
now we are planning to migrate to SharePoint 2013.
The many benefits of standard systems were paid for with these migrations. In this way we
have a system for our users that always suits the current technology!
Naturally, there were many people with objections. But I had to think about how to best
service the masses with systems like SharePoint. Already the first hurdles showed
themselves in preparing complex multimedia content for all, so that everybody could find
and properly use the data.
Today we could not do without our hundreds of structured SharePoint pages, and it has
become a fixed part of many processes.
In the process, the requirements of extranets and intranets have fused together more and
more. My decision from 2002 to unify them for Rosenbauer turned out to be trend-setting.
Today, we all just speak of the Rosenbauer Portal.
This portal is used around the world by employees and by selected partners, and once again
safety and structure is the key and the technology has to work in a simple manner.

SharePoint.Connect - connects the Rosenbauer Portal with the image
database and thus enables organic growth!
The image treasure trove that now resides in the media database is accessible to many, but
not yet all employees.
This is why in November 2012 we began to connect both of these worlds. To do so, a
technical solution had to be found that could use all media data and functions from Celum
imagine directly in SharePoint.
What was our goal? To make the best images available to all employees! Quickly and
directly! Users should be able to retrieve this select media data on a self-service basis. Thus,
we want to make the treasures of the image archive accessible directly!
What was our problem? No, it was not the technology; this had to - as mentioned many
times before - simply work!

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Initial analysis showed us the biggest project challenge: Organizing of the storage! If media
from various areas is to be published while at the same time keeping in check the
administrative effort for rights management, the reorganization of storage was unavoidable.
Within the reorganization of the media database, the following aspects were dealt with.
1. Experiences from previous years were processed
 What have we learned?
 Reduction of rights groups.
 Think practically!
 Which images should be stored?
 Who can see which image groups?
 Download formats for the users: which ones do they need, and more importantly,
which ones do they understand!
2. Necessary adjustments for the SharePoint connection. Definition of areas that we
want to publish jointly. For this we had to think strategically about the future and
anticipate possible future options.
3. Tightening up the rights! – Reduction of the management effort! Not to provide
every image with special rights, and not every sub-area with different rights.
Keep the rights compact! Optimize the folder structure for the administrator - and
the keywords for users!
After successful reorganization, we started to "weave-in" content on certain portal pages.
The user should have no idea that he is getting data from another system.
The user doesn't care where the data is stored, whether it's in the file system, in databases,
or even in the cloud. He just wants to find and use the data quickly.
An example is our CIP Page with embedded media files. CIP (continuous improvement
program) is a KAIZEN project. Here, images are a very important part of the project:
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It's about people, which is why these people should be the focal point.
It's about examples; therefore these are to be documented in images.
It's about making success visible, with images of course.

Thanks to the method of integration, users were able to use these functions immediately.
Thus the new media database had a very high level of acceptance right away.
Most users didn't know that this data now came from another system, as we've already said,
but this is not even necessary.
Furthermore, instant usability was created as double entries were no longer necessary. Up
to that point the best images were stored twice. Because first - all images were loaded to the
media database and then copied for publishing to SharePoint. Of course this copy lost all
meta information from the image database. This is especially problematic for image rights!
Quite apart from the fact that it was simply an extra effort that did not add any value!
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Also, users who only consumed images - had an immediate advantage: the option to
download images in different formats - which for many users was a very big comfort and
thereby increased employee efficiency.
The concept of pages and clustered information, as is commonplace in our SharePoint world,
were also integrated. The user can find the media in the same place as all other content. The
media database didn't have just one access point - but many, and every access point opens
another area. But in order to be able to provide central access, we integrated the media
database in the SharePoint Enterprise search. The rights concept and the new structure were
very important for this integration. We don't want to distribute the "wrong" images after all.
We authorized a pool of images for an "internal public" in the media database.
Searching is becoming an ever more important access path for portals. Because only
searching offers the non-omniscient a quick path to his data! But users are used to thinking
in menus and levels, so a further development of the user's habits is needed for this search
access. Here, a simple rule applies: either I know where something is or I search for it with
the search function!
To make users excited about the system and win over more and more users, such a system
must react quickly to queries. We can't fulfill all wishes, because the system is subject to our
strategy, but many additions make sense and further develop the system.

Why SharePoint.Connect?
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Data must be stored where it belongs.
Data must be provided with good additional metadata.
Data must be easily found at the right time.

Finally, I would like to add the following thought: "Hidden information is no information"
"It's not about what's in the media database, but what part of it can be found!"
Between the photographer and the sales staff at the customer's, who makes presentations
with SalesPoint, there are many steps that must be optimized. SharePoint.Connect closes
one of these media gaps for us.

Joris Gruber, April 2014

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