1. “In terms of datacenter operations, thanks to System
Center, we are helping the country achieve significant
budget savings on a daily basis.“
Eng. Nelson Dias, Information Technology Department Director, Angolan Ministry of Justice
and Human Rights
After decades of conflict, the Angolan people are being helped in
their rapid return to national confidence by two major systems
aimed at helping citizens: a national ID card for everyone and
computerization of the country’s criminal records. These
important national projects are being powered by high efficiency
on the back end thanks to Microsoft System Center. The latter
enables Angola’s Ministry of Justice and Human Rights to manage
IT deployment across the world’s 27th
largest country.
A commitment to national
excellence
The geographically-vast country of Angola.
located in southern Africa, is achieving
major success with two ambitious national
projects overseen by its Ministry of Justice
and Human Rights. This includes a new ID
card system for all its 25 million citizens
over the age of six and the complete
computerization of all its criminal records.
These are big projects for a big country:
Angola is the seventh-largest nation on the
entire continent. The two systems are being
successfully run via a private cloud-based
datacenter. The latter runs at optimal
efficiency thanks to the skills of its local
systems integrator, use of key Microsoft
System Center technologies and the Azure
platform, which replaced VMware’s vCloud
as an integral VM (virtual machine)
management tool.
Microsoft technology driving one of Africa’s most
successful National ID card rollouts ever
Customer: Angolan Ministry of Justice and
Human Rights
Website: www.minjusdh.gov.ao
Customer Size: 9,104 employees
Country: Republic of Angola
Industry: Public Sector
Partner: DGM Sistemas, LDA
Partner Website: www.dgm.co.ao
Software and Services
• Microsoft System Center 2012 R2
• Microsoft System Center R2 2012
Configuration Manager
• Microsoft System Center R2 2012
Operations Manager
• Microsoft System Center R2 2012
Orchestrator
• Microsoft System Center R2 2012 Virtual
Machine Manager
• Windows Azure Pack
• Microsoft Active Directory
• Microsoft SQL Server Cluster 2012, 2016
• Microsoft Exchange 2013
For more information about other
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
http://customers.microsoft.com

2. This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published September 2016
“I need to be able to get a new ID card
delivered on time to someone who lives not
down the street from my office in Luanda,
but a thousand kilometers away. This IT
system makes sure that is possible,” explains
the CIO, Engineer Nelson Dias.
Strengthening the private cloud
Angolan systems integrator DGM Sistemas,
LDA was brought in to help maximize
efficiency, by using the Ministry’s core IT
asset, its datacenter. This facility, based on
IBM hardware while using both Windows
and Linux operating systems, had begun its
operational life during the last decade. It was
mainly run using VMWare virtualization
services. However, it became clear that a
new, more rigorous set of management
tools, involving more aggressive use of the
private cloud, would be needed for
something as high-scale and secure as the
two systems that the government committed
to setting up in 2008.
Engineer Nelson Dias lists that he knew the
new system would bring new challenges:
“The challenge was to monitor all updates
better; to improve security around all our
servers, workstations, and mobile devices;
and support true, 24x7, highly scalable and
reliable, zero downtime IT service to both our
civil service (which manages these projects)
and our many citizens (who want the best
security we can offer).”
DGM Sistemas’ Infrastructure Architect for
the project, Nuno Gonçalo Amaro, picks up
the story. “We saw that the main challenge
was getting good control of the dispersed
network of workstations, nearly 1000, that
deliver the projects at nearly 180 remote
sites dispersed over the country,” he says.
“This involves nearly 900 servers: 300 at the
main datacenter and 600 remotely. We
needed to deliver best-in-breed tools to
help our public sector partner better
manage all of its devices and thus operate
better.”
Since its introduction a couple of years
back, System Center now allows MJDH to
keep control of both his central site and
nearly 180 satellite Ministry operations. As
a result, “It is possible to deliver new virus
definitions every single day and get back
accurate reports on my whole stack.”
Faster deployment and better
day-to-day operational, back-
end management
The partners to Engineer Nelson Dias’ team
and his chosen integrator partner, DGM,
agree there are a number of success metrics
for this important national e-government
project.
The most critical and important metric has
to be service to citizens. “We are a big
country without developed infrastructure in
many areas,” says Engineer Nelson Dias.
“However, we are still able to deliver a
resident a new ID card on time, thanks to
this new system. This happens all over a
country that’s 1.2 million km2
: twice the size
of France or Texas. We have already
managed to make this dream a reality
extending the service for the 18 provinces
of the country, that’s an achievement of
which I am really proud. In terms of the
criminal records, we now have three million
certificates delivered in the new
transparent, secure data storage system.”
This has only been possible because the
project is now being powered the right way,
acknowledges Engineer Nelson Dias. “In
terms of datacenter operations, thanks to
System Center, we are helping the country
achieve significant budget savings on a
daily basis,” remarks Engineer Dias, noting
how his team sees a range of efficiencies
from all the applications it works with now:
not just the critical national ID card rollout.
These improvements to the Ministry’s
infrastructure management benefit from
faster deployment of patch management
and antivirus solutions. They also have a
much more centralized view of operations
that is helping to address issues before they
become problems. Meanwhile, more and
more datacenter operational routines have
become automated, enabling his team to
switch its attention to other, more value-
added tasks. “We have created customized
dashboards that watch our business core;
for example, not only the servers
themselves, but also the overall state of
each and every application. This helps
improve delivery of the ID and criminal
records systems,”. Engineer Dias adds that
the next steps are likely to include greater
use of System Center to allow even more
highly-granular scrutiny of his datacenter at
the router level and also move to the next
Suite version.
“We used to have problems only when a
user complained,” Engineer Dias notes.
“Now, thanks to System Center, operational
teams get notified and react to issues
before anyone becomes aware of them.”