Does that sound interesting for you and your company?
Then get in touch with us.
When we talk today about companies using the crisis surrounding the new coronavirus to take steps forward in digitalization, we ask ourselves: why? Why is it necessary to let a virus be the trigger for a shift that has been around for decades? We ask ourselves this because we have lived and are still living the change. This is our story.
A lot has happened in the more than 30 years since we were founded. The internet has become compatible with the masses, the smartphone has revolutionized the world and nowadays it is normal to make decisions about freedom and privacy. One thing has remained constant over the years: Information is being made more quickly and easily accessible to a broad mass of people. This technological progress forms the basis for what we do today, just as it did back then.
Starting out as a small software company with traditional local IT, we have always had a broad knowledge of IT infrastructure. Always accompanied by innovative software solutions that ran on this infrastructure. From the best RAID to a diverse landscape of Linux, Windows and macOS machines (and also as a NeXT dealer), we were able to handle the complexities and were always very broadly positioned.
We needed fast networks, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet. That was always important to us. Smart routing, efficient networking, telephony, services in our own server room and later in our own data center, completely hand-optimized and the components selected and coordinated with great care. The model had worked well, but in recent years it has started to crack.
Many services have moved to the cloud. Knowledge of infrastructure is still important. But where there used to be just a few systems, today a large number of applications are required to operate a service. Top of the line identity and security, a move away from monolithic architectures to loosely coupled systems, modern networking with resilience and elasticity on software stacks that are becoming increasingly complex to meet today's needs. Replacing applications as requirements change has become the norm.
Today, almost all services are online. Anyone can access anything from anywhere. Services can be tightly integrated. All you need is a cell phone or a computer.
As a logical consequence, we made the final cut in 2019 and completely separated ourselves from traditional local IT. While OHB InfoSys GmbH takes over the tasks of classic IT for the OHB Group, we can now focus entirely on advising companies on the transformation of digitization and the engineering of cloud-native apps. In this way, we support companies on their way to the cloud.
The IT of the 1990s has little relevance for this, not only for us, but also for the majority of companies. What are the reasons for having your own data center today? What value proposition do the cloud and its operating models deliver for a company? Digitalization puts us in a situation where we need the cloud, not as a replication of internal IT, but as a new model with its own architecture. Cloud models are then more elastic and flexible (if used correctly). The major changes in the market, but also in companies, as well as the rethinking of people in society are changes that mean that IT has to change fundamentally in order to remain relevant today. We have to be pioneers on this path, because cost pressure, IT security, quality requirements and integration with other companies and services are becoming increasingly important. For many, the use of cloud computing is and will become the most important building block in the corporate strategy of the 21st century.
We want to show what steps we have taken, what mistakes we have made and how we are doing pioneering work for companies that are in the same situation as we were back then.
It is worth taking a look at the years 2006 to 2014. During this time, there were three important innovations, all of which rapidly increased the speed of information flow and access.
Of course, there was the introduction of the iPhone in 2006/2007, which paved the way for a new generation of services. At the same time, Amazon introduced AWS and for the first time offered an elastic cloud platform that made it possible to deliver services for smartphones.
In the early 2010s, there was new competition: Android, app stores, Microsoft Azure. New platforms and operators in the ecosystems sprang up. Compute, storage, network, etc. were already available for little money on the open market, but now the market was on the move.
In the years that followed, the use of mobile devices increased to almost 60 million users in Germany today, meaning that mass adoption can be assumed.
Today it is normal for all of us to book services on the Internet (even if only privately) and use them everywhere. And at a price that ranges from free to a few euros a month. This leads to little risk, because you can try it out and cancel if you don't like it. For companies, the developments are mixed. Successful companies take advantage of these opportunities and massively expand their internal and external services so that the quality of service increases and meets requirements. Companies that do not take advantage of these opportunities are under enormous cost pressure and are thinking about how they can make their services even more accessible.
It is amazing how quickly business models have switched from a store concept to an online-first concept. Under the pressure on the business model due to the current coronavirus pandemic, some companies have managed to make the switch. If you can now even buy ketchup online, then the online model is probably the only model that works these days.
In the context of cloud computing, the services offered are often classified into the following models (according to NIST):
SaaS is the model that most companies use today when they buy products. The full service is delivered, you don't have to worry about the underlying layers. The only thing that matters is the added value of the service combined with the price. This makes the decision to buy easy. Mostly in combination with leasing models and monthly subscription costs, SaaS products are available in many companies today.
With PaaS, the service provider bundles several infrastructure services into one offering. Common PaaS applications are, for example, web services, such as those available in Microsoft Azure as a web app.
PaaS offerings are characterized by the fact that they usually deliver the services that the customer wants to offer as SaaS in a simplified manner thanks to very simple deployment and you only have to worry about the network, compute and storage to a very limited extent. With Azure, it is sufficient to specify which VM speeds and capacities are required. The scaling and load balancing of these applications is then handled by the platform and can be automated.
PaaS platforms therefore offer clear advantages for many applications.
When it comes to having full control over everything, IaaS services are the way to go. For example, there are various scalable compute solutions from the major providers, such as Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine or Microsoft Azure Compute. They all offer comparable solutions. In addition to compute, storage and network services are also classic IaaS products. This service model offers customers the advantage of not having to set up their own data center, as each part of the infrastructure can only be accessed via the cloud, but must also be maintained and serviced.
Studies such as the bitkom survey show that nine out of ten companies are already using cloud computing. A further 8 percent are considering using the cloud and only 3 percent of companies are against using it.
With the service models of the cloud in our pocket, we had to think about which services to move and where. There are three environments in which you can move your data and applications to the cloud.
In the private cloud, resources are provided in an external data center that are only accessible to a specific group of users. This is done either via a protected network or with restricted access via the internet. In the private cloud, independent administration often incurs the same costs as operating your own data center. The resources are also reserved exclusively for the operator.
The public cloud exploits all the advantages of a cloud solution because it shares resources across all customers, resulting in optimal utilization and allowing services to be offered at lower prices than in one of the other cloud models.
With our knowledge of service models and the various clouds, we now also had to consider how we wanted to organize the elimination of traditional IT.
The questions that play a role here:
Can we use (almost) all business-relevant services as a ready-made SaaS product?
Can applicable compliance requirements be covered?
In particular: Has data protection been sufficiently taken into account? Can privacy requirements be consistently transferred and the strengthening through GDPR also be realized in the cloud?
Is data security guaranteed? (Or is it perhaps even higher than before? Keyword ISO 27001:2013)
Are the innovations in processes and in the way we work together suitable for our organization?
Do we have the necessary transparency and capacity for change in the organization?
Can we achieve a cost reduction and at the same time maintain a better service level?
The answer to all these questions was: YES.
Nothing stood in the way of operation in a public cloud either. None of the business-critical applications were to exist in a self-developed version to begin with. The services in the office were reduced to the essentials so that we could carry out our work entirely via the Internet (a decision that helped us to maintain operations without losses at the beginning of March 2020 in times of Corona).
In the long list of services that we need (booking system, collaboration tools, office services, planning tools, design tools, CRM, marketing tools, cloud computing platform, automation platform, ...), Google with G Suite or Microsoft with Microsoft 365 are currently the main platforms that try to map these requirements in one package.
We opted for Microsoft 365. Google has a very good offer with G Suite, but Microsoft still offered us
Office integrations for the Office apps used,
a logical extension for our development, which was already running in Microsoft Azure, and
a good platform for introducing Dynamics 365 as an accounting and CRM tool.
With the rollout plan in place, we introduced Microsoft 365 in 2019.
But wait a minute: the story doesn't end here, because we're not finished today. We have been working for 2 years to further optimize our company with the right tools.
Microsoft 365 extends our collaboration tools around the Atlassian Suite and pulls together core business applications. The platform provides us with connected knowledge through a variety of important business tools, from accounting to development.
Our business applications are also in the cloud and our old on-premise systems have been replaced. We have a modern CRM for our customer contacts and work with collaboration tools in Microsoft 365.
Instead of simply lifting and shifting services to the cloud, we considered which services could work in the cloud and which could not. We then gradually introduced the new processes and tools, sometimes a little too quickly, sometimes only superficially. We are learning every day what it means to implement a functioning operation on these tools. We continue to introduce new services and this constant change has become the new normal.
Some employees wish for a world back in which we are finished at some point. Our answer to this today can only be: That world is over and we now live in a world of constant change.
Then get in touch with us.
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