For Strasbourg-based IT services company MD6, cloud hosting offers not just an opportunity to win new business, but a way to change how the organization works. MD6 is a major player in its native France, delivering a wide range of offerings to clients, including software integration, cybersecurity and managed IT services, as well as innovative IoT services, such as connected time clocks for remote workers, via its subsidiary Idemoov.
MD6 had been looking to extend its offering into cloud hosting, moving away from more traditional up-front investment in and management of infrastructure, and towards a scalable as-a-service model to help streamline and simplify IT operations. Wanting to have the ability to make changes to its setup without being beholden to terms set by a hyperscaler, MD6 turned to Lenovo and the flexibility of Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for help.
With customers attracted by the low upfront costs, MD6 saw an opportunity to adapt its offerings into an alternative, more customizable option delivered by a provider its clients trusted.
Roberto Gessa, President of MD6 said, “MD6’s competitive strength lies in our ability to offer highly responsive, customized services to our clients, both at their sites and in our own data centers. We wanted to offer the flexibility of cloud but in an environment that we could host, control and manage.”
After extensive research, MD6 found that Lenovo TruScale IaaS offered the flexibility and scalability to deliver the responsive service its customers need, combined with readily available and knowledgeable local support.
A new approach
MD6 already offered customers a wide variety of services, including IoT platforms such as fleet management via Idemoov. One Idemoov connected object helps to manage everything from forklift trucks to scooters, while a connected time clock allows remote workers to sign in at customer sites. With a wide client base and a range of use cases within the organization, MD6 knew it could deliver a more localized and personal service but feared that building its own cloud environment could require a large upfront investment, or leave it dependent on a hyperscaler and exposed to unknown future costs. The flexibility of Lenovo TruScale offered a more compelling third option.
“We’ve known the local Lenovo team for several years, and we have shared relationships with clients through our work as a systems integrator,” said Gessa. “From those projects, we know that Lenovo is able to deliver when we or our customers have an urgent requirement.”
The company moved quickly: with the help of Lenovo experts, MD6 was able to go live with two Lenovo TruScale Hybrid Cloud With Nutanix servers within five weeks, deploying Lenovo server and storage hardware on-premises through a pay-as-you-go model.
Lenovo’s Vice President and General Manager, Hybrid Cloud Services, Dale Aultman says, “The flexibility of Lenovo TruScale IaaS ensures that MD6’s customers enjoy the confidence of managed on-premises infrastructure combined with the scalability of cloud services. MD6 needed to deploy hardware and services with greater predictability of costs, and Lenovo TruScale has delivered that, along with an optimized solution and the flexibility for future expansion.”
Gessa said, “What’s important for us is to retain control over the service we provide. We’ll always be the one offering the service to our customers and we’re looking to be as autonomous as possible, offering the flexibility of the cloud but in an environment that we could host, control and manage. This reassures our customers because they know us.”
Lenovo TruScale is also enabling MD6 to build new service offerings such as backup-as-a-service and 24/7 cybersecurity for clients, rapidly and without the need to worry about how much capital outlay would be needed and when, starting small and scaling up quickly as demand rises.
New potential for growth
Another area with potential for growth driven by the flexibility of Lenovo TruScale is Idemoov’s IoT services, including fleet management and remote worker management solutions. Idemoov’s IoT solutions can generate enormous volumes of data, some of which is sensitive. Hosting the applications and data on its own on-premises private cloud also means that MD6 can easily ensure regulatory compliance. The switch to the new Lenovo environment has enabled Idemoov to grow new services at speed, putting enormous opportunities within reach.
Gessa said, “If it gets off the ground, we know we’re likely to need a lot of resources. How fast? At what pace? We can’t say exactly today, but one thing’s for sure: if it takes off, the growth will be swift. Hence the importance of having a model that’s supportive, flexible and friendly. With Lenovo TruScale, we can respond to growth in demand by rapidly provisioning new capacity.”
A new way to work
Lenovo TruScale has empowered MD6 to change the way it works, enabling it to increase capacity in line with customer demand, while growing revenue. Implementing the Lenovo infrastructure-as-a-Service solution has also freed up considerable time for MD6’s employees. MD6 administrators who previously had to check multiple different components can now work more efficiently and responsively through a holistic ‘single pane-of-glass’ management approach, giving them an easy-to-use overview of how their systems are operating, leading directly to a 95% reduction in time spent on system administration. *
“The as-a-service model moves responsibility for the hardware to Lenovo, so we’ve gone from two hours a day spent on administration to less than five minutes, freeing up time to spend with customers,” explains Gessa.
Choosing Lenovo TruScale has given MD6 confidence to deliver new services to clients in the coming months and years, knowing that the business can scale and add capacity swiftly. This means that there is new potential for growth, not just for MD6 but for Idemoov as well.
Gessa said, “Lenovo TruScale enables us to bring the benefits of a cloud environment to our customers without any compromises around security or control of the managed environment. If we need to grow, we now have a solution that enables us to add capacity very quickly. Most importantly, we have the capacity to finance that growth, aligned with the way in which we bill for our services.”
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*Results may vary and are dependent on many factors and customer requirements.
