Challenge.
Munich-based ROBUR Industry Service Group GmbH aims to help industry stay on top of technological and environmental change. The corporate group is one of the top 10 industrial services companies in Germany and focuses on rapid industrial change, particularly digital industrial services. ROBUR harnesses its collective expertise in the planning and implementation of the technological and environmental transformation to stand out from the crowd. The individual companies benefit from the synergies generated by the Group’s size and international activities in all management and service areas. Previously, the 30+ companies under the ROBUR umbrella had their own heterogeneous IT landscapes and therefore no common environment. In order to collaborate more efficiently, ROBUR was looking for a central cloud solution for all employees. A modern, centrally managed workplace for Group companies meant, however, that the applications used at the time needed to be consolidated and standardised while secure and scalable. Due to the variety within the corporate group, the varying number of employees and the complexity of the existing application landscapes, the status quo (hardware and software) first needed to be investigated before a highly precise and detailed concept could be put together.
Bechtle is extremely flexible making collaboration outstanding from day one. We have several companies all following different paths towards the same goal, but with Bechtle by our side, we are able to meet the challenge head on. We were able to flexibly tackle technical issues during the project and Bechtle provided flexible support and helped us seamlessly integrate all partners into the central cloud. Together, we have managed to find a landscape with which everyone can work.
Clemens von Dellemann, Head of IT, ROBUR Industry Service Group GmbH
Solution.
As ROBUR mainly uses Microsoft Office products and wanted to use Teams and SharePoint for future collaboration, it quickly became clear that Microsoft 365 and an Azure infrastructure (for Azure Virtual Desktop and Azure Files) were the best options. Thanks to Bechtle’s extensive expertise and the fact that the IT company had already successfully migrated a ROBUR subsidiary into the cloud, Bechtle was commissioned to take on the project. Following an approach combining classic and agile project management, Bechtle consolidated the individual companies’ infrastructures in three steps. To start with, Bechtle’s experts analysed the status quo at each company in terms of network, devices and applications. At the same time, Bechtle and ROBUR defined the individual responsibilities, compliance parameters and governance policies and defined central settings and management processes in workshops with licencing models and operational processes automated to save costs. The challenge was in the Group companies’ varying infrastructure requirements, which was why Bechtle initially split them up according to size (small, medium, large) and type of business to create the foundation for the method of migration, which Bechtle designed as various building blocks to meet the various technical aspects of the various target technologies. Bechtle assigned responsibility for each building block to one person, who handled the migration—from design to operational handover—in their respective technological fields.
After the target infrastructure had been designed, the migration and switch over for each individual company was planned with Bechtle putting together blueprints for each company cluster and selecting the migration tools. Detailed business analyses and service processes were designed, tools and scripts tested and a pilot migration carried out before the actual migration finally took place. For this to happen, Bechtle followed structured steps, which followed a timeline consisting of various steps—from tenant and design aspects to the migration of the Active Directory, Exchange, data, security settings, Teams, backup configuration, etc. Bechtle also held training courses and introduced user adoption methods. A service and support contract ensures to this day that the employees receive the support they need, while admin staff have the benefit of a 2nd/3rd level support contract. Step-by-step, Bechtle migrated ROBUR’s subsidiaries into the cloud without any significant downtimes. All can now access a central portfolio provided by Bechtle, the contents of which the IT company selected together with ROBUR. The HP and Lenovo clients and monitors plus Jabra headsets ordered there standardise the corporate group’s hardware and facilitate IT operations.
Business benefits.
ROBUR benefits from a central cloud infrastructure, unified IT management, increased security, modern tools and efficient operating processes. In addition, the portfolio simplifies hardware procurement and makes the IT landscape more homogeneous. Employees now have a mobile, modern workplace and can communicate more efficiently across the Group. A shared application landscape smooths the standardisation and automation of operating processes while the central infrastructure and defined onboarding processes form the foundation for ROBUR’s future growth backed by Bechtle.