Challenge.
Always on the move, never stagnating, is the Schneider Group’s motto when it comes to handling, transporting or shipping. The company also does not stand still when it comes to growth. In the Asian region and in the USA-Switzerland traffic, the Schneider Group is expanding strongly. The customers of the family-run company appreciate the global network with personal service. Communication - digital, via audio or video - provides significant IT support.
In order to meet its strong growth and digitization strategy, the Schneider Group therefore made a conscious decision to place parts of its IT expertise in professional hands. The company was looking for a partner to take over operational responsibility for the basic infrastructure and platform services. Thanks to clearly defined processes and responsibilities, Schneider IT wanted to be able to concentrate on its business processes and applications again. But the most important thing was that the Schneider Group was looking for a modern, highly available, high-performance, secure and scalable IT environment with proactive operation and guaranteed SLAs for its locations worldwide (Switzerland, Europe and the USA).
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Solution.
To determine which services Schneider IT could outsource, the company defined its own day-to-day business requirements together with its long-standing IT partner Bechtle. From its close partnership, Bechtle was aware of the business’s dependence on an available and high-performance IT environment. In order for the Schneider Group to serve its customers and handle its time-critical day-to-day business, employees must be able to access their business applications quickly and reliably at all times. With 360° infrastructure, Bechtle offers a highly standardized Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environment in several Swiss data centers, which Schneider wanted to use. The fully managed Citrix farm in the Bechtle data center provides provisioned desktops as well as published applications - complemented by the extensive use of Microsoft 365 services such as Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business or Microsoft Teams. With 360° operation, Bechtle took over the operational responsibility for Schneider’s approximately 100 servers, and with the 360° monitoring service, all relevant IT systems are monitored 7x24.
In order to be able to use the workloads at the locations worldwide, Bechtle developed and implemented a highly standardized network concept. A high-availability Cisco Meraki firewall cluster was implemented at each Schneider site and in the data center. Bechtle implemented the connection to the Internet, the data center, and the cloud services with Cisco Meraki SD-WAN technology. Instead of the existing and cost-intensive MPLS lines, some of which had very low bandwidth, Schneider Transporte used two independent Internet lines from different providers with high bandwidths at each site. Bechtle also ensured fast data transfer rates between the sites and the data center via Meraki firewalls and secured them globally via Cisco Umbrella. Meraki switch clusters with sufficient ports were installed at each Schneider site. They are included in the Bechtle 360° network service.
Furthermore, Bechtle rolled out a uniform WLAN with several hundred Meraki access points across the entire area. With these, Schneider’s employees use a fully comprehensive internal WLAN. Guests, in turn, access the Internet via a uniform guest WLAN for all locations, which is also secure thanks to the WLAN access points integrated in Cisco Umbrella. Bechtle set up the firewall, network, and WLAN environment worldwide and now provides it as a managed service with proactive operation and guaranteed availability. Certified Cisco technicians have equipped each of the installed components with a Cisco Onsite CarePack for fast and professional hardware replacement in the event of a fault.
And it continues: Schneider is currently piloting the conversion of workplaces to Bechtle SMART Workplace. With this highly standardized modern workplace approach, Bechtle will manage fat clients worldwide with Schneider using Microsoft 365 technologies such as Autopilot and Intune.
Thanks to our strong and professional partner Bechtle, we no longer have
to worry about our IT and network infrastructure on our own. It is stable
and always up to date. Today, Bechtle is responsible for large parts of
the Schneider Group’s worldwide IT operations as a managed service,
including the complete network and firewall infrastructure. Together with
Bechtle, we are defining the future of our IT. In doing so, I very much
appreciate the high level of communication.
Dominik Hürner, Stellvertretender IT-Leiter, Schneider & Cie AG
Business Benefits.
Today, Bechtle relies on new technologies at the Schneider Group - reliable for all employees, regardless of workplace and location - and operates them with clearly defined responsibilities and assured availability. The IT department of the Schneider Group can concentrate on its core competencies, because the hardware and software are secure, scalable, and significantly better performing than before. The intensive support and modernization provided by Bechtle has been able to increase the Schneider Group’s business enormously. “Thanks to today’s IT environment, we are able to do more business every day,” says a delighted André Strebel, CEO of the Schneider Group. Another advantage of Bechtle’s 360° Services: the entire IT can be budgeted precisely. This is because the all-round package not only ensures availability, functioning hardware, licenses and repairs, it is also provided by Bechtle at a defined price. Further joint projects are therefore already in the works.
Partner.
