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When we talk today about how companies should use the crisis surrounding the novel coronavirus to make strides in digital transformation, we ask ourselves: why? Why must we leave it to a virus to trigger a shift that has been underway for decades? We ask ourselves this because we have lived through this transformation and are still living through it. This is our story.
A lot has happened in the more than 30 years since our founding. The internet has become accessible to the masses, the smartphone has revolutionized the world, and today it’s normal to make decisions about freedom and privacy. One thing has remained constant throughout all these years: information is being made available to a broad audience faster and more easily. This technological progress—today as it was then—forms the foundation of what we do.
Starting out as a small software company with traditional local IT, we’ve always had extensive knowledge of IT infrastructure. This has always been complemented by innovative software solutions that ran on this infrastructure. From top-tier RAID to a diverse landscape of Linux, Windows, and macOS machines (and as a NeXT dealer), we were able to handle the complexities and maintain a very broad range of capabilities.
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—all manually optimized, with components carefully selected and coordinated. The model had worked well, but in recent years it has begun to show cracks.
Many services have moved to the cloud. Knowledge of infrastructure is still important. But where there used to be only a few systems, today a multitude of applications is required to operate a service. Top-of-the-line identity and security, a shift away from monolithic architectures toward loosely coupled systems, and modern networking with reliability 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, virtually 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 took the final step in 2019 and completely separated ourselves from traditional on-premises IT. While OHB InfoSys GmbH handles the traditional IT tasks for the OHB Group, we can now focus entirely on advising companies navigating the digital transformation and on engineering cloud-native apps. In this way, we support companies on their journey to the cloud.
IT from the 1990s is no longer very relevant in this context—not just for us, but for the majority of companies as well. What reasons are there today for maintaining an on-premises data center? What value proposition do the cloud and its operating models offer a company? Digitalization is putting us in a situation where we need the cloud—not as a replica of internal IT, but as a new model with its own architecture. Cloud models are more elastic and flexible (when used correctly). The dramatic changes in the market, as well as within companies, and the shift in people’s mindsets in society are driving IT to undergo fundamental changes in order to remain relevant today. We must be pioneers on this path, because cost pressures, IT security, quality standards, and integration with other companies and services are becoming increasingly important. The use of cloud computing is—and will continue to be—the most important building block in the corporate strategy of the 21st century for many companies.
We want to show what steps we’ve taken, what mistakes we’ve made, and how we’re doing pioneering work for companies that find themselves in the same situation we were in back then.
To that end, it is worth looking at the years 2006 through 2014. During this period, there were three major innovations, all of which rapidly increased the speed of information flow and access.
Of course, there was the launch of the iPhone in 2006/2007. It paved the way for a new generation of services. At the same time, Amazon introduced AWS, offering for the first time an elastic cloud platform that made it possible to deliver services to smartphones.
In the early 2010s, new competitors emerged: Android, app stores, and Microsoft Azure. New platforms and providers sprang up within these ecosystems. Compute, storage, networking, and other resources were already available at low cost on the open market, but now the market was in flux.
In the years that followed, mobile device usage grew to nearly 60 million users in Germany as of today, so we can safely say that mass adoption has taken place.
Today, it’s normal for all of us to sign up for online services (even if only for personal use) and use them anywhere. And all at a price ranging from free to just a few euros a month. This involves little risk, since you can try them out and cancel if you’re not satisfied. For businesses, the developments are mixed. Successful companies are seizing these opportunities and massively expanding their services—both internally and externally—so that service quality improves and meets customer needs. Companies that fail to take advantage of these opportunities are under enormous cost pressure and are considering how they can make their services even more accessible.
It’s amazing how quickly business models have shifted from a brick-and-mortar concept to an “online-first” concept. Under pressure on their business models due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, some companies have managed to make the transition. If you can now even buy ketchup online, then the online model is probably the only one 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 purchasing products. The full service is provided, and there’s no need to worry about the underlying layers. The focus is solely on the value the service provides in relation to its price. This makes the purchasing decision easy. Often combined with leasing models and monthly subscription fees, SaaS products are now common in many companies.
With PaaS, the service provider bundles multiple infrastructure services into a single offering. Common PaaS applications include, for example, web services, such as those available in Microsoft Azure as Web Apps.
PaaS offerings are characterized by the fact that they typically simplify the delivery of the services the customer wishes to offer as SaaS through a very straightforward deployment process, requiring only minimal attention to networking, computing, and storage. With Azure, it is sufficient to specify the required VM speeds and capacities. The platform then handles the scaling and load balancing of these applications, which can be managed automatically.
As a result, PaaS platforms offer significant advantages for many applications.
When it comes to having full control over everything, IaaS services are the way to go. For example, major providers offer various scalable compute solutions, such as Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Microsoft Azure Compute. They all offer comparable solutions. In addition to compute, storage and networking services are also classic IaaS products. This service model offers customers the advantage of not having to build their own data center, since every part of the infrastructure is accessible only via the cloud—though it still requires maintenance and upkeep.
Studies such as the survey conducted by bitkom show that nine out of ten companies already use cloud computing. Another 8 percent are considering using the cloud, and only 3 percent of companies are opposed to its use.
With the cloud service models in hand, we had to decide which services to migrate and where to move them. There are three environments where you can move your data and applications to the cloud.
In a private cloud, resources are provided in an external data center and are accessible only to a specific group of users. This is done either via a secure network or via the Internet with restricted access. In a private cloud, the effort required for independent management is often comparable to that of operating an in-house data center. Furthermore, the resources are reserved exclusively for the operator.
The public cloud takes full advantage of a cloud solution because it distributes resources across all customers, resulting in optimal utilization and allowing services to be offered at lower prices than in any of the other cloud models.
Armed with our knowledge of service models and the various cloud platforms, we now had to consider how we wanted to approach the phase-out of traditional IT.
The key questions to consider are:
The answer to all these questions was: YES.
There were also no obstacles to operating in a public cloud. None of the business-critical applications were to exist in an in-house developed version at the outset. The services in the office were reduced to the bare essentials, so that we could carry out our work entirely over the Internet (a decision that helped us maintain operations without any losses in early March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic).
Among the long list of services we need (booking system, collaboration tools, office services, planning tools, design tools, CRM, marketing tools, cloud computing platform, automation platform, …), the major platforms currently trying to meet these requirements in a single package are primarily Google with G Suite and Microsoft with Microsoft 365.
We decided to go with Microsoft 365. Google has a very good offering with G Suite, but Microsoft provided us with
With the implementation plan in place, we rolled out Microsoft 365 in 2019.
But wait a minute: The story doesn’t end here, because we’re not done yet. We’ve been working for two years to further optimize our company with the right tools.
Microsoft 365 expands our collaboration tools built around the Atlassian Suite and brings together essential business applications. The platform provides us with integrated knowledge through a wide range of important business tools, from accounting to development.
Our business applications are now also in the cloud, and our old on-premises systems have been replaced. We have a modern CRM for our customer contacts and use collaboration tools in Microsoft 365.
Instead of simply moving services to the cloud via “lift and shift,” we considered which services could work in the cloud right away and which could not. We then gradually introduced the new processes and tools—sometimes a bit too quickly, sometimes only superficially. Every day, we’re learning what it means to run a functioning operation using these tools. We’re still introducing new services, and this constant change has become the new normal.
Some employees long for a world where we’ll eventually be “done.” Our answer to that today can only be: That world is over, and we now live in a state of constant change.
Then please contact us.
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