“The transition was a stressful and time-consuming period, especially because things did not always go as planned with the line providers. But SHD supported us greatly here and made sure the work was carried out correctly. Considering the benefits already mentioned, the solution is definitely one we would recommend. The IT delivers exactly what we hoped it would,” Wolfgang Koster sums up after one year in live operation.
Outsourcing IT infrastructure to an external data center: still a no-go for many companies. Not so at Möbel Ehrmann in Landau. Since early 2018, the expanding company from the Palatinate has relied on the SHD Data Center and is therefore excellently positioned for the future, with maximum security, availability and flexibility.
SHD takes the load off our daily work, and we get all services from a single source.
Wolfgang Koster, Head of IT, Controlling and Accounting
The family-owned company Ehrmann, headquartered in Landau, is one of the market leaders in the Palatinate, Baden and the neighboring Alsace region. The corporate group operates furniture stores in Landau, Reilingen, Frankenthal, Rastatt and Herxheim, plus three self-service furniture markets in Neustadt, Germersheim and Landau, as well as two kitchen studios in Landau and Bruchsal. The VME-UNION member currently employs around 550 people.
Until early 2018, all “IT threads” from Möbel Ehrmann's eleven locations came together centrally in Landau. For some time, the company had already been considering how best to secure this “bottleneck.” The decisive trigger for actively addressing the issue was ultimately a major fire in the immediate vicinity of the Landau furniture store. “If the flames had spread, the fire would likely have destroyed our IT infrastructure as well, among other things. That would not only have affected us here in Landau, but all of our locations,” explains Wolfgang Koster, Head of IT, Controlling and Accounting at Möbel Ehrmann. On top of that, the company no longer wanted to deal with running the IT infrastructure itself. Together with its longtime IT partner SHD, the company took on the project and quickly arrived at the topic of IT outsourcing. After consulting with industry peers and other users of the SHD Data Center, the people responsible at Ehrmann were convinced that outsourcing IT to the SHD Data Center was the best solution for the corporate group. Wolfgang Koster: “Other reasons for the outsourcing included the hardware renewal that was coming up in the near future and the new location in Rastatt. But what was ultimately decisive was really the realization that the fire could easily have turned out differently.”
In addition to the trusted partnership with SHD, the use of SHD Managed Services also spoke in favor of the Andernach-based IT specialist. Möbel Ehrmann has already been using SHD services around data backup, firmware updates, hardware and operating system patching, networks and security for some time and is fully satisfied with SHD's performance. “Before SHD Managed Services was introduced, an IT service provider looked after our network. However, the maintenance involved was so extensive that it could barely be handled by one or two people and was correspondingly cost-intensive. That is why we chose SHD Managed Services. SHD takes the load off our daily work, and we get all services from a single source. That also means we have just one direct point of contact for any questions or concerns,” says Wolfgang Koster, appreciating the benefits of the service.
All Ehrmann branches are now connected directly to the data center via a powerful, encrypted connection. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) ensures secure, fast, flexible and reliable transmission of VPN data within the corporate network, which enormously increases reliability and data availability. “We now only run a single local server for our marketing. Everything else is located in the SHD Data Center,” says Wolfgang Koster.
The actual work of moving to the data center was carried out well before the actual cutover date. In the process, SHD migrated all server systems from the virtualization environment into a data center simulation network.
The data was then transferred to the data center. In early February 2018, the actual switch to the data center finally took place. “The only hurdle in implementing the project was the line connection with the required bandwidth, which the previous telecommunications provider could not deliver. After switching providers to Inexio, we overcame this hurdle as well,” reports Stephan Röder, member of the management board and Head of Sales at SHD Technologie und Service.
Even today, Wolfgang Koster sees the biggest benefit of IT outsourcing in the area of security, which is also SHD's top priority and is ensured through the use of the latest technology, certified specialist staff and the highest requirements for the data center: location in Germany, building infrastructure, climate control, uninterruptible power supply, fire protection and access control. In addition, having SHD handle the complete administration of the IT landscape contributes to a maximum level of security. SHD makes sure that systems, backups, updates and other IT processes are always kept up to date.
The IT manager, who has worked at Möbel Ehrmann since 1999, sees another advantage over an “in-house solution” in the newly gained flexibility: “Especially now that we have opened another location in Rastatt, the flexibility offered by the data center is of great benefit to us. We can add resources or scale them back accordingly, entirely as needed.” Heiko Schreiner, Service Center Team Leader at SHD Technologie und Service, adds: “When purchasing hardware for the Rastatt location, Möbel Ehrmann would also have had to buy the necessary resources more than a year in advance. And a complete hardware renewal would have created a high long-term need for IT investment with corresponding capital tie-up. On top of that, there would have been a not-to-be-underestimated effort for administering and monitoring the systems.”
We now only run a single local server for our marketing. Everything else is located in the SHD Data Center.
Wolfgang Koster, Head of IT, Controlling and Accounting
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