Cent Systems digitizes in the Swiss cloud

The challenge: geo-redundancy, security, flexibility

Cent Systems works according to the maxim of always checking new IT opportunities for their cost-cutting potential and exploiting this consistently. This is the only way the digitization specialist can offer its customers a competitive input management solution. After the initial assessment, the management team quickly realized that an in-house second system was out of the question for cost reasons. System support in particular would be far too expensive and not economically justifiable.

So we had to find an external solution. At a safe distance, efficient and immediately available. Due to the size of the company and the scaling options, the shared cloud model was the obvious choice. But be careful: Cent Systems primarily digitizes invoices and receipts from the healthcare sector. This includes sensitive personal data that must be processed and stored in Switzerland. Guaranteed data storage in Switzerland is and remains a non-negotiable requirement for Cent Systems' cloud partner.

After the first round of evaluation with the criteria "geo-redundancy" and "Swiss cloud", four providers remained. One of these was ITpoint Systems AG with the Prime Managed Services concept ORIA, which was recommended by KPT, the parent company of Cent Systems.

The next very important evaluation criterion for Managing Director Adrian Tschannen was the flexibility of the partner and the managed services. Outsourcing the IT infrastructure to ITpoint/ORIA was just one part of the overall IT renewal project that was currently underway. The first collaboration with ITpoint confirmed Tschannen's confidence in ORIA Prime Managed Services from ITpoint. Very flexible and yet the systems were stable right from the start.

For this reason, the management of Cent Systems decided while the major project was still ongoing to outsource the operation of the IT infrastructure in its entirety immediately and to put the new application into operation in ITpoint's shared cloud right from the start. Contrary to the original plan, but with good reason and valuable immediate benefits - especially for the difficult software renewal sub-project.

The solution

Cent Systems procures the entire IT infrastructure as a managed infrastructure service from ITpoint. The entire operation is the responsibility of ITpoint, with guaranteed service levels.

• With Operation Services, ITpoint assumes operational responsibility for
  service elements: service desk, 2nd level support, monitoring/reporting and service management
• Highly secure, round-the-clock monitored cloud environment
• Application and data stored and secured in two Swiss data centers (guaranteed data storage in Switzerland)
• Support availability selected by Cent: Monday to Friday 07.00 - 19.00 (5 x 12)
• an internal liaison person at Cent Systems reports service and change requests to ITpoint
• Proven recovery routine for emergencies
• Contracts secure service levels (availability, response and recovery times)

Advantages

With IT outsourcing to ITpoint, the issue of geo-redundancy in the highly secure Swiss cloud was quickly resolved. What other advantages has Cent Systems gained with the new IT solution? Even a year after the infrastructure outsourcing, Adrian Tschannen is still impressed by the flexibility of ORIA Prime Managed Services and the guaranteed stability of the systems. In this respect, ITpoint was already way ahead of the other providers during the evaluation phase. "ITpoint signaled during the bidding phase that they are flexible with their managed services, and they prove this time and time again. That's really impressive," says the IT-experienced managing director of Cent Systems.

• System stability and maximum flexibility at the same time
  Adrian Tschannen has seen other providers quickly turn down requests for flexibility on the grounds that they would then no longer be able to guarantee system stability. "ITpoint manages both: very flexible and very stable. I don't know how they do it, but they obviously can. We've never experienced it any other way."
• Agile basis for the renewal and expansion of the core applications
  Depending on the requirements of the software/business side, Cent Systems could and can flexibly change ordered server configurations, routers etc. at any time. The new core application was gradually put into operation in the ORIA Cloud. Cent Systems was even able to cancel services already ordered from ORIA and save these costs!
• Internal IT resources saved
  The complete infrastructure outsourcing of Cent Systems has freed up human and financial resources since summer 2017, which were very welcome in other sub-projects of the overall IT renewal project.
• Transparent IT costs based on the usage principle
  Managing Director Adrian Tschannen likes the fact that Cent Systems now only pays for the IT resources that the company uses with ITpoint's managed services. This is in stark contrast to the fixed IT ownership costs prior to outsourcing. ITpoint invoices the IT costs monthly according to components/subcomponents. "Everything is very transparent and financially manageable," summarizes Managing Director Adrian Tschannen.

The experience gained confirms to Managing Director Adrian Tschannen that he has done everything right by choosing the flexible and cost-transparent ITpoint as his infrastructure partner. Not only for current day-to-day business, but also for future IT opportunities. Tschannen sees new potential for efficiency gains in text interpretation solutions. In other words, applications that not only see letters, but can also reliably recognize the text content and automatically forward it to the relevant specialist. And, of course, the security and encryption of data remains an important issue.