customer
BMW Group

industry
automobile

Number of employees
Around 120,000 employees

solution
Network design, setup, and operation for the BMW Group Campus for autonomous driving

benefits

• Network as a service – transition from old to new during ongoing operations
• fail-safe operation
• Uncomplicated integration of BMW Group partners
• Automatic authentication for new BMW Group partners across the entire campus, including wired network connections in meeting rooms
• Compliance-compliant, secure environment

Microstaxx has successfully implemented a solution for the BMW Group at its Unterschleißheim site that enables data to be exchanged easily with various partner companies in one place, while also facilitating interactive collaboration. The initial focus was on designing a network that would ensure collaboration, but also the individual data sovereignty of each BMW Group partner at every location on the autonomous driving campus, followed by fail-safe operation. Microstaxx has now been ensuring this for more than four years.

initial situation

Wherever users move around the BMW Group Campus for autonomous driving, the new campus network should enable communication between the various partners on site, cover data security, easy access, and, of course, all compliance requirements.

Since the Campus for Autonomous Driving already existed as an independent BMW Group location before the integration of partners, Microstaxx’s first step was to implement a seamless and failure-free transition from the BMW Group’s internal IT structure to the newly designed network structure during ongoing operations for several thousand employees within a few months.

solution

When designing the new network, each partner company of the BMW Group first had to be given permanent access to its own network area, including a connection to its own company, but also be able to exchange data with the BMW Group via an area that each of the companies shares with the BMW Group. The participating partner companies of the BMW Group must be isolated from each other for this purpose. This means that only individually approved connection channels may be open when accessing the network. To this end, Microstaxx developed a dynamic network with user authentication to provide the appropriate access rights and networks. Access should be possible via both Wi-Fi and network plugs.

The wired network connections in the meeting rooms posed a challenge. To enable maximum flexibility and efficiency, Microstaxx installed its own authentication service that forwards access requests directly to the respective BMW Group partner company. This resulted in two advantages: The network sockets do not have to be assigned to a specific access point. They function as a dumb or ‘colorless’ port, forwarding the authorization request and only accepting the identity of the user and the company upon confirmation. This allows employees to connect to the network at any port on campus. They are automatically in their compliance-compliant and secure environment. Thanks to this ‘price per port’ model from Microstaxx, costly patch management is no longer necessary.

The simplified onboarding and offboarding processes also allow changing project partners of the BMW Group to be integrated into projects more quickly. At the same time, each company can manage the authorization of its own employees. If a device still cannot log in, users can request device approvals via a landing page with an approval process. This eliminates the need for additional central administration in any case. This makes agile working with multiple partners on site possible without any problems.

Since 2018, Microstaxx has been operating the high-availability network as a ‘network as a service’. To ensure reliability, Microstaxx has designed the entire network to be redundant. This means that system components that fail during operation can be replaced and maintenance tasks carried out without restricting availability.

conclusion

Microstaxx is delighted that all service level agreements have been implemented 100 percent from the outset to the present day. Microstaxx attributes the successful design and operation of the system to its excellent collaboration with the BMW Group, the high level of expertise of its own employees, and the outstanding technology partners with whom Microstaxx has been working successfully for many years.