Möbel Brucker has achieved its goals. The infrastructure now rests on cost-efficient, secure, and future-proof foundations. Many things are noticeably faster and easier now, for example in administration, maintenance, and backup. Employees benefit from accelerated services and applications. In addition, the furniture store now has sufficient capacity to expand its IT landscape and keep growing as a company. "The overall performance of the system has increased significantly, and we have ample buffer for the coming years and projects. We have also become faster thanks to the new backup software from Veeam. The daily backup run now takes considerably less time. On top of that there is high process reliability: the backup completes without errors, which saves a lot of time and effort. The investment was right and necessary, both from my perspective and from that of management, also with a possible switch to SHD ECORO in mind," concludes Frank Lauterbach.
More efficient, more secure, and more cost-effective: following this principle, Möbel Brucker GmbH & Co. KG, based in Kall, optimized costs, consolidated, and future-proofed its IT infrastructure. The ambitious project was successfully implemented together with long-standing IT partner SHD.
The overall package, the good experience we have had with SHD over many years, and SHD's knowledge of our IT landscape convinced us.
Frank Lauterbach, IT Manager Möbel Brucker
The success story of the family business Brucker began 66 years ago in a small hall. Today, the furniture store, based in Kall in the Eifel National Park, is known far beyond the borders of North Rhine-Westphalia. With a showroom area of 72,000 square meters and over 300 employees, the company is one of the largest furniture stores in Germany.
For many years, furniture store Brucker has sourced most of its software and hardware from its IT partner SHD, with whom it had also successfully carried out the virtualization of its IT infrastructure six years earlier. However, the base infrastructure, in use since 2011, was now reaching its limits in terms of performance and capacity. Stability and fail-safety could no longer be guaranteed. In addition, an update to the VMware virtualization software in use was due, and support for Windows Server 2008 R2 was set to expire in 2020. "On top of that, the costs associated with service contracts for older systems rise disproportionately, and backup issues caused considerable extra effort," explains Frank Lauterbach, IT Manager (CIO) and also responsible for marketing.
So when the step to the current generation of hardware and software solutions became due, the question was also: how can the infrastructure not only be modernized, but also optimized to be future-proof and cost-efficient?
Following an on-site assessment by SHD Technologie und Service, a concept was developed that meets the furniture store's current and future requirements. Frank Lauterbach: "Of course, we also obtained other offers. In the end, the overall package, the good experience we have had with SHD over many years, and SHD's knowledge of our IT landscape convinced us. Unlike all other providers, SHD brings together expertise in both software and hardware. This was also decisive in choosing our partner."
Final confirmation that they had made the right decision came at the SHD Technology Forum in June 2018 in Andernach, which the IT manager used to exchange ideas extensively with SHD staff and other decision-makers from the furniture industry.
Together with SHD, Frank Lauterbach evaluated various options. "In discussions with Mr. Lauterbach, we then worked out many further details together. Service contracts were also a key point here. We got the best possible terms for Brucker from our IT partners. Taking into account the annual increase rate of the service fees for the components concerned, this results in savings of more than 45,000 euros compared to the previous contracts, over a contract term of 60 months," calculates Giuseppe Voria, SHD Technologie und Service. Since the service contracts run for five years, no price increases are due.
Thanks to good project planning, those responsible at SHD and Möbel Brucker could look forward to the day of the changeover with confidence. To avoid downtime, the new hardware was preconfigured by SHD in advance, then assembled and installed offline. "We placed the new system next to the old one, cabled everything up, and switched over. The whole thing went absolutely smoothly and without affecting day-to-day business," is how Frank Lauterbach briefly sums up the migration. When the IT manager talks about "his machine or system," this includes, among other things, two VMware servers, one backup and PRTG server, one backup storage system, a standalone tape automation solution, the latest version of Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise (a data protection software that can back up, restore, and replicate VMs quickly, flexibly, and reliably), Microsoft Windows Server 2016, and many other components.
Stephan Röder, Head of Sales at SHD Technologie und Service, attributes the smooth success of the comprehensive modernization in part to the collaborative partnership with Möbel Brucker and Frank Lauterbach: "The excellent cooperation was one of the factors responsible for the project's success. In addition, Mr. Lauterbach was able to significantly reduce service costs through his own contributions, easing the strain on Brucker's IT budget."
We placed the new system next to the old one, cabled everything up, and switched over. The whole thing went absolutely smoothly and without affecting day-to-day business.
Frank Lauterbach, IT Manager Möbel Brucker
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