How adopting an ‘as a Service’ model helped at data deliver more for its customers

at data Infrastruktur GmbH is a German business working with more than 800 customers. It offers complete IT solutions including commercial software such as customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), as well as services ranging from Internet of Things installations to connected factories. Part of the larger System AG IT services group, at data’s seven branches across Germany deliver IT infrastructure, managed services and private cloud solutions.

Amongst at data’s customers, there has been increasing demand for new ways to reduce carbon emissions of technology stacks, as well as managed cloud services backed by high levels of security to protect sensitive data. The at data team felt they had reached the limits of their existing infrastructure and needed to change their approach to deliver more flexible and scalable services to customers.

Lenovo’s expertise in ‘as a Service’ solutions and helping customers meet sustainability goals made it an obvious choice to work with, particularly as at data is an existing Lenovo 360 Partner. Working with Lenovo, the company found that adopting Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with Nutanix would help it to deliver a new, super-flexible private cloud environment to customers, at a more competitive price, with 30% lower total cost of ownership. Lenovo TruScale IaaS with Nutanix is a solution that hosts virtualized compute, storage and networking, combining the security of on-premises infrastructure with hybrid cloud services. Users are able to benefit from the latest data center hardware through a scalable model.

Patrick Schindler, CEO, at data Infrastruktur GmbH, said “With Lenovo TruScale, we can be confident that we can scale up as demand grows and always align our costs and capacities with actual business requirements to offer attractive pricing and services to our customers. Thanks to this, our sales team can easily offer hosting and managed services as an option in any negotiation, without us having to worry about capacity planning and costs.”

Building on the foundations

As a trusted Lenovo 360 partner, at data already offered the full range of Lenovo products and services. Moving towards an integrated, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution based on Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series was a natural next step, allowing the business to be more flexible, offer better pricing, and deliver more add-on services for its customers. Lenovo’s experts were on hand to advise on the most effective hardware solution, and the company settled on five Lenovo ThinkAgile HX3376 Certified Nodes with 24 cores of powerful AMD EPYC 7002f processors.

This delivered rapid results, with revenue from Lenovo services tripling in just two years. at data has continued to partner with Lenovo to pioneer new tools and services for its customers and to try out new approaches, thanks to the flexibility of the Lenovo TruScale ‘as a service’ solution. The company became an early adopter of the innovative Renewtrak offering by Lenovo’s partner, which makes it easier for customers to renew or refresh hardware via a simple online portal, meaning that at data could offer more attractive support and upgrade options.

Dale Aultman, Vice President & General Manager, Hybrid Cloud Services at Lenovo, says, “As customer demands evolved, at data needed a more flexible approach to not only meet current requirements but also address emerging challenges. Lenovo TruScale has given the company the tools to scale, while delivering deeper insights to inform critical decision-making. With Lenovo TruScale, the company can now offer new services and proactively anticipate customer needs, which is crucial in today’s competitive landscape.”

Faster, stronger, safer

at data’s customers rely on the company’s collaboration with Lenovo to help deal with complex, varied and demanding workflows, large numbers of IoT devices, and remotely controlled industrial processes. For example, one customer uses the Lenovo and Nutanix solution to control chemical processes in a factory in Hungary from their head office in Germany.

Administration is now easier for customers, with data backups delivered five times faster, reducing the nightly backup window, and at data able to deploy new virtual systems with significantly reduced downtime. With data flowing to and from connected factories and Internet of Things installations, cybersecurity and data protection were front of mind. Schindler says, “We provide highly reliable and customized business services from the security of a German data center with full control over data storage and processing.”

at data customers can also rely on Lenovo services to support their sustainability goals. Lenovo’s CO2 Offset Services can help balance the environmental impact of customer implementations (and its own infrastructure) and help customers to achieve their ESG goals by estimating CO2 emissions across the average lifecycle of a device, from manufacture to daily use to end of life, and offsetting them by purchasing credits to support verified CDM, Gold Standard®, Climate Action Reserve, and United Nations climate action projects aimed to help reduce CO2 emitted in the atmosphere.

Schindler says, “Working with Lenovo helps us to do our work with the environment in mind and encourage our customers to follow our example.”

Future-ready

As well as working with Lenovo for its customer-facing operations, at data also used Lenovo TruScale Device as a Service across its business. The flexible, subscription-based billing model helped it to grow and prepare for future opportunities without high upfront investments.

Schindler concludes, “Lenovo TruScale IaaS helps us to right-size our IT infrastructure and improve our cashflow with predictable monthly bills. We can quickly scale incrementally by simply adding new nodes.”

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How adopting an ‘as a Service’ model helped at data deliver more for its customers

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