Celebrating our birthday with a treat: Fundaments introduces new service

22 years of Fundaments

A lot has happened in those 22 years. Larik-Jan Verschuren, CTO of Fundaments, reflects on this period.

Larik-Jan, what are you most proud of?
A lot has happened in 22 years: the IT world has changed tremendously, and with it, the perspectives and needs of our customers. I am proud that Fundaments has always been able to keep pace with these changes, side-by-side with our customers. Over the past few years, we have shown that this synergy creates a great mix of the right products and services from various suppliers. It’s an offering that gives our MSP partners and ISV end-users what they need, while also giving them the chance to take that next step into the future. Our suppliers see this too. A great example is our VMware ‘Cloud Verified’ status. It’s a wonderful recognition!

What stands out most from the past 22 years?
“Change is the common thread: the technology that took off and continues to do so. The sky is the limit. But even more so, how that growth constantly changes the daily reality of our customers and offers more and more possibilities.

The last two years in particular were special. Working from home really caused a turnaround. That was possible because we were already very advanced in the cloud. The Fundaments Cloud—our infrastructure—offers more and more ‘under the hood,’ with the convenience that all services can be accessed online, anytime and anywhere. But that also brings huge challenges that we sink our teeth into, because the data exchanged when accessing services online must be truly secure.”

Where do you see Fundaments in the future?
“Innovation has always been very important to Fundaments. Thanks to our people and our investment in their development, we aren’t just a cloud service provider following the ‘usual suspects’ route; we are a cloud provider that truly thinks about what is technologically possible and how it provides the most benefit to our cloud users. Our ambition to be an innovation leader in the Netherlands ultimately ensures that we simply want to be the best. I see us as the knowledge leader in design and the frontrunner in delivering and managing mission-critical clouds in the Netherlands. We distinguish ourselves through high quality and by housing our services in a sovereign cloud, where information security, data locality, and quality form the foundation.

In addition, we continue to develop ourselves, partly because we are part of Interstellar. This group has a wide range of specialties, which allows us to further expand our services in areas like cybersecurity. I believe that by bundling these specialties, we can now serve the market very comprehensively with relevant services.

We also look at market issues from our own ‘kitchen.’ For our Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), we have provided management services for their platforms for years, and we have seen that software development has changed through the use of containerization. With Docker and now Kubernetes, a desire has emerged to use these types of services. Yes, you can find these services in the public clouds of Azure, Google, and Amazon, but because it is fully managed at Fundaments by a team of experts, with certified processes and from a sovereign cloud in the Netherlands, it creates a solid platform for developing and hosting in partnership.”

New service: CPaaS
“As an ISV, delivering Software as a Service (SaaS) is central. For this, it is important to develop functions and launch new features in a secure, fast, and scalable way. You need a good foundation for that. To properly manage a complete container infrastructure with various application functions, a management platform is required. Kubernetes is one of the most important solutions in the current market. To be completely unburdened in hosting and maintaining this Kubernetes platform, Fundaments has developed a new service: Container Platform as a Service (CPaaS). This allows the platform user to focus on developing application code while Fundaments takes care of the rest: 24/7 management of the infrastructure and the correct functioning of the Kubernetes components. Even if non-containerized components are needed, that is exactly what Fundaments can provide: secure access, fully monitored by a Security Operating Center (SOC), linked to a fully managed database, or additional measures for continuity and backup. Often, a move to a containerized environment is a journey where server-based technology merges with containerization.”

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