Boosting Business Agility and Reducing Costs with Future-Proof, Dynamic Infrastructure as a Service

Overview

Challenge

• To help social and healthcare organizations in Germany build cost-efficient IT services, Techniklotsen gGmbH needed scalable and reliable data storage.

Solution

• Techniklotsen worked with Kramer & Crew to move to Hitachi EverFlex Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), deploying a future-proof, extensible, secure solution.

Outcome

• Reduced costs for customers and increased commercial flexibility to win new business while maintaining complete data protection and data sovereignty.

Challenge

Techniklotsen gGmbH is a leading full-service technology provider that specializes in supporting the social and healthcare sector in Germany. The non-profit IT company is a subsidiary of the social welfare organization Evangelisches Johanneswerk gGmbH and employs more than 90 people.

For most of its customers, Techniklotsen acts as a one-stop shop for everything related to IT, communications, and other technology. Its services play a vital role in the efficient running of nursing homes, hospitals, childcare centers, inclusive businesses, and other charitable services that assist and aid people in need.

Across Germany, social welfare organizations are facing continuous pressure to reduce costs. At the same time, new requirements in areas such as cybersecurity are constantly increasing. To free up limited funds to address these needs, it’s more important than ever to reduce capital expenditure and streamline IT operations.

Viktor Gutjahr, Head of IT at Techniklotsen gGmbH, explains, “Our goal is to offer tailored, cost-efficient professional services to enable social and healthcare businesses to focus on their core mission. We really understand their business needs and have deep experience with the specialized software that is used by many organizations in the sector.”

He adds, “With data powering more and more of our customers’ processes, it became essential for us to find a future-proof, reliable and secure data storage solution. Social welfare organizations in Germany must comply with strict data protection regulations, so we needed a flexible and scalable on-premises solution that could ensure the highest levels of data sovereignty.”

Solution

Working with its trusted IT advisor and implementation partner Kramer & Crew, Techniklotsen selected Hitachi EverFlex Infrastructure as a Service to optimize its cost structure and consolidate its data storage. “This is the third time that we have deployed Hitachi Vantara storage together with Kramer & Crew,” says Viktor Gutjahr. “For this latest upgrade, Kramer & Crew proactively suggested Hitachi EverFlex to help us boost our business agility. The service aligns our costs with our business needs, enabling us to offer even more competitive prices to our customers.”

Techniklotsen deployed two Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) Block arrays as primary block storage to run 500 virtual machines on the Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware virtualization platforms. The all-flash solution with 140TB effective capacity delivers fast performance and full redundancy across both systems. Meanwhile, VSP One’s built-in nondisruptive maintenance capabilities help Techniklotsen maximize application availability for its customers.

To modernize its backup solution, Techniklotsen also migrated from a third-party vendor to a VSP One Block for Mid-sized Enterprises, which is also covered by the scalable Hitachi EverFlex contract.

“With Hitachi EverFlex, we took the opportunity to consolidate and standardize our data storage,” adds Viktor Gutjahr. “EverFlex gives us dynamic scalability, which helps us quickly and cost-effectively increases our backup capacity as needed. Kramer & Crew provided excellent guidance and support throughout the process.”

Outcome

By embracing Hitachi EverFlex IaaS, Techniklotsen no longer needs to spend time on detailed capacity planning. The company can simply scale dynamically on demand, while freeing up cash resources by eliminating the need to invest in unused storage capacity.

“With the move to Hitachi EverFlex we have transformed the pricing model for our customers,” confirms Viktor Gutjahr. “Hitachi EverFlex brings real commercial benefits for them, and for our business, too. The cloud-like, consumption-based pricing approach combined with guaranteed local data storage in Germany helps us win new customers with highly attractive offers and reduce costs for existing customers.”

For example, Techniklotsen provides crucial IT services for over 7,500 employees for its largest customer, Johanneswerk — a social welfare organization that cares for more than 12,000 people, including the elderly, people with illnesses or disabilities, children, young people, and families. In total, Techniklotsen manages systems, applications, and services for more than 12,000 business users working across a number of social welfare organizations.

Being able to scale quickly and easily is important for Techniklotsen, as the business is constantly expanding. “We always adapt to new challenges, whether that is due to changes at Johanneswerk or by gaining new customers,” explains Viktor Gutjahr. “Our customer engagements often start with an in-depth analysis followed by a thorough transformation phase to modernize and standardize IT services and operations. Hitachi EverFlex helps us move more quickly when onboarding new customers and deploying optimized solutions for social welfare organizations to increase organizational efficiency and staff productivity.”