Starting point.
Sonceboz is a Swiss technology company and a leader in flow control and mechatronic drive solutions designed to operate in harsh environments operating on an international level—Sonceboz, Boncourt, Lausanne, France, Germany, the USA, and China—which operates all of its IT services from its headquarters in Sonceboz. Its business projects needing to have shorter and shorter turnaround times to implement their solutions prompted the IT team to rethink their concept of data centre.
Project objectives.
With a strategy for the next five years, the IT team wanted to grow its data centre infrastructure with the main aims of boosting agility, performance, and efficiency in order to ensure the RTO/RPO defined by their business, while also ensuring a homogenous system for all of its branches. Moreover, the project needed to evolve as time progressed.
Challenges.
In order to best respond to our customer’s needs, our experts conducted an infrastructure audit over several days. Following this, we were able to create an RFP with invitation procedure together with the customer, as requested.
We contacted three vendors, asking them to come and present their solutions. The RFP with invitation procedure was to consist of five lots comprising the following elements:
- Logical model for the proposed solution for each lot
- Installation model for the proposed solution for each lot
- Overview table with height in RU and power consumed for each piece of equipment
- Details of the elements forming the equipment (CPU, RAM, NIC, etc.)
- Details of the service provision for the deployment of the solution for each of the lots.
- The completed price table
At the end of this tender, we supported Sonceboz’s IT teams in evaluating the offers and in discussions with the various vendors.
“We particularly appreciated the impartiality of our Bechtle contacts, from our Key Account Manager to the experts that worked with us. Discussions were always constructive and honest, which quickly gained our trust. We were also able to always talk to the people we needed to. The budget was also very well thought out and respected,” Massimo Perla tells us.
We were looking for the right partner to successfully conduct this large-scale project. And with its wide range of services, we were convinced that Bechtle was the right partner for us. The Bechtle teams aren’t just there for you as a systems integrator, we’re talking about real consultants that weigh up the positives and negatives in an unbiased way and provide real advice in your decision making. And despite their local presence, we could tell by some of our various requests that there is a solid group in the background.
Massimo Perla, IT-Manager Sonceboz
Solution.
The decision was made to implement the HPE SimpliVity solution for all of Sonceboz’s sites.
“It quickly became clear that HPE’s SimpliVity solution was the one for us for many reasons. Technological developments, features the competition didn’t have, and the models’ backup and deployment was particularly outstanding. Of course, our experience of more than 20 years with HPE also influenced our choice.
Despite these advantages, there remained one problem—the solution was far out of our budget. The HPE and Bechtle teams were able to find a way around this and were very financially accommodating which allowed us to choose this solution. The Try and Buy offer was also crucial for us. We really wanted to test the chosen solution thoroughly first, putting it all through its paces for a month, apart from the hybrid component that was not yet available. We were able to conduct all other tests, however, and they only strengthened our decision”, Massimo Perla explains.
Customer benefits.
“Thanks to the Try and Buy system, we were able to see that the CPU resources were only just sufficient and replace them in order to keep up with our current and future needs. We were therefore able to quickly boost system performance, especially on some critical applications, and the user experience has also been greatly enhanced. Moreover, we are also enjoying a very flexible environment that lets us run all updates without interruptions to service. The backup system’s flexibility and performance are also major benefits that we were able to test thanks to the Try and Buy system.
Another positive is that we now have access to a new management system, we haven’t had to overhaul our daily tasks. It was a logical progression from our current solution meaning that our teams haven’t had to be retrained, their skills are still valid. Additionally, the SimpliVity hyper convergence solution enabled us to gain physical space in our data centre as we moved from an entire rack per room to just half. This also means we have greatly reduced our energy consumption.