New car repair company, NVK (Softline Premier Services)

2025: Automation of IT processes based on free software

On April 1, 2025, Softline Group of Companies (PJSC Softline) announced that it had helped Novaya Car Repair Company automate IT infrastructure management processes, optimize resources and ensure a higher level of corporate data protection. The Softline team designed and developed a free software-based configuration and group policy management system. The customer received a centralized IT infrastructure management system by developing mechanisms that are not provided for by standard open source scenarios.

As reported, the New Car Repair Company (NVRK) is a joint network of car repair enterprises, which as of April 2025 covers 38 regions where more than 9.5 thousand employees work. NVRK specialists annually perform over 100 thousand scheduled repairs of all types of rolling stock. The network of enterprises covers 15 railways of the country.

The company contacted Softline Group of Companies, as it was required to increase the efficiency of IT infrastructure administration. The customer has long been working in a Linux environment, using free software in a number of processes, in particular the Free IPA directory service and the Salt Stack configuration management system. Administrators controlled servers and workstations using built-in tools, which led to a significant amount of manual labor and inefficient use of resources. The open source solution did not have all the necessary settings, configurations and behavior templates, so the NVRK group needed to develop a new software product based on the Salt Stack and Free IPA software packages, allowing it to function as a group policy service for domain objects in a Linux environment.

The development of the project was implemented by the Premier Services Softline team,. The first stages included the study of the characteristics of the organization's IT landscape, a survey of information systems and requirements for integration and interaction. Together with the team of administrators of NVRK, the technical aspects of the project were worked out. The wide capabilities of the software environment allowed Softline Group of companies specialists to offer the customer several implementation options taking into account the functionality, peculiarities of server and workstation operation, as well as information security requirements.

After the customer approved the optimal option, the Softline Group of companies specialists began to develop the basic architecture of the future system. Work was carried out to design and create the architecture of the system for configuring, storing and distributing group policies, the required group policy templates, the mechanism for applying access rights, and the project documentation was prepared. After the development was completed, a number of successful pilot tests were carried out at the Softline test bench in the NVRK infrastructure. After all tests and modifications, the project was successfully launched in the customer's work loop.

The Softline team implemented an atypical project for the market in just 6 months. As a result, the customer was able to centralize and optimize the management of server and client equipment by automating processes, increasing control over the use of data and the actions of privileged users.

We have carefully approached the choice of a partner company: nowadays it is quite difficult to find specialists who are well versed in the technological base of Linux at a deep level and are able to quickly select and adapt the set of programs we need for current tasks. This project is one of the key milestones in the task of migrating the company's working environment from Microsoft to Linux, as well as the foundation for the digital transformation of our business - the Digital Depot software and hardware complex. Previously, we were guided by domestic OS, but the level of maturity of these solutions and the ratio of price and quality absolutely did not suit us. So we came up with the idea of ​ ​ forming our own "information ecosystem" based on open source software products. We understood exactly what we wanted to get from this project and what level of competence is important for us for its further development. The professionalism of Softline Group of companies Group specialists and well-coordinated interaction at all stages ensured the achievement of the result we need. told Alexander Fedenko, Information Technology Director of the NVRK Group of Companies

The development of the solution for NVRK required non-standard approaches in terms of architecture design, which were subject to information security requirements. The customer team has industry expertise, which helped to comprehensively approach changes in the IT infrastructure and correctly form the terms of reference. At the same time, difficulties were associated with the need to create an "add-on" over an existing system with its own features, which imposed restrictions. commented Nikolay Glazov, Project Manager in the Department of Premier Services of Softline Group of Companies