CSN Groep

How to create the ideal Cloud-Platform for your customer? A platform that effortlessly meets all their requirements, is scalable and on pay-per-use basis. It is the top concern for countless IT service providers. Including CSN Groep, who reached out to Fundaments, Expert in Clouds. Sales director Karste de Vries at CSN tells about the innovation power of Fundaments that helped them get ready for the future.

Karste tell us, why did you call for the help of Fundaments?

"We were facing a big challenge regarding the digital transformation of our customers. CSN is mainly active in the construction industry and offers a platform to facilitate the BIM-process. BIM stands for Building Information Management, actual supply chain integration. Construction projects require everyone to be able to work from a single data model at the same time. CSN provides a platform where everyone can collaborate in 3D design applications. From architect to electrician. Our platform is based on a lot of data that has to be processed all the time. On top of that, the graphical requirements are heavy. You have to be able to scroll through a model drawing with a fluid motion. Offering a high-quality platform requires a lot of IT resources. For this, we bought the hardware ourselves, installed it at the customer's location and did the maintenance. We had already migrated the workloads that were previously on-premises to our own data centre, but it took more and more time, money and effort to do everything ourselves. So much time that sometimes we couldn't even meet our customer demand. After all, time to market is often very short in construction. It was also at the expense of focusing on our core business: helping our customers with great BIM products. We were therefore looking for a party that could take matters off our hands and help us with our customers' further digital transformation. The key question: how do we set up digital workstations with fast access to all data and super great graphics performance?"

How were you able to find a solution together with Fundaments?

"Let me start by saying that it was a big challenge to even find a party that could help us at all due to our specific requirements and the rarity of our stack. Fundaments welcomed us enthusiastically and with open arms. They were convinced they could help us. Fundaments' stack is based on VMware and as a solution to our issue, they offered the associated vCloud Director tooling. A kind of toolbox containing building blocks that allow you to create the ideal cloud platform for each customer. To do so, we could transfer our customers‘ workloads to Fundaments’ data centre in Enschede. ‘Bimming’ would thereby become possible from any device. Self-reliance, which was very important to us, was central to the solution. The tool makes it possible to do the measuring yourself, keep track of each customer's usage for pay-per-use, make changes and scale up yourself; all in a simple and clear manner. Maintenance would be entirely in the hands of Fundaments. Exactly what we wanted. What offered trust was that Fundaments is one of the few parties in the Netherlands that is fully certified to work with vCloud Director. The proof that they have a high level of expertise. We were immediately wildly enthusiastic. Or well, commerce was wildly enthusiastic. We realised that vCloud Director allowed us to build the ideal platform for our customers in no time. That we could scale up instantly because of Fundaments' large amount of hardware. That we never had to sell no to a customer again. The tech people, on the other hand, didn't like the migration to the Cloud at all."

What were your tech people's concerns?

"Facilitating the BIM process and providing a platform as a result is all about tuning hardware to ensure the 3D design applications run properly and remain up and running. If you match the wrong hardware with the applications, they won't work. Besides, it is a chain full of separate components. If one component needs an update, it affects the whole chain. In short, our product is very specialised. Our technical people were afraid that Fundaments didn't have the right knowledge and hardware in-house. They didn't want to outsource the stack, updates and maintenance for fear of a drop in quality for our customers."

How did Fundaments address those concerns?

"They took our technical people step by step through the migration process to the Cloud. The Fundaments technicians showed how everything works in their data centre in Enschede. What hardware they use, how updates are performed, how the data is secured and so on. Slowly, they won the trust of our technicians. Simply by proving that what they do works. That our customers' workloads are in good hands with them and that they have all the expertise to facilitate and maintain our specialist processes. Meanwhile, our tech people are completely sold. They are as one with Fundaments, which is now an extension of us on a technical level. The solution they provided and our collaboration feels like a cozy jacket."

Did Fundaments‘ solution also feel like a cozy jacket to your customers?

"Well, not immediately. It was quite a culture shock. They were used to working on big heavy computers and now we told them they could work from the Cloud from any device. Fast and with the same graphic performance. No one believed it at first. Now that it is up and running, they don't want or could think of anything else. Whether they are in the office, on the building site or in China: our platform is always accessible thanks to Fundaments' Cloud environment. That is of course ideal for our customers."

So, how does Fundaments‘ solution work in reality?

"Sometimes it feels a little like I'm spreading gospel, but the benefits are unimaginable. Our tech people can focus on their core business again, customers can work site-independently in a customised Cloud platform, we have less cash-out because we no longer have to buy our own hardware, our lead time has been drastically reduced, and thanks to Fundaments' solution we have a big competitive advantage. We can deploy very quickly where others cannot. So we are more than completely satisfied."

What was Fundaments' added value in this process?

"Innovation power. Using the vCloud Director gives us the power to move quickly. It gives us the ability to be self-reliant and we have freed up time for our tech people allowing them to get busy perfecting our BIM products. After all, that's what makes us unique as CSN Groep. I think it's really awesome to see. Thanks to Fundaments, we can continue into the future. Thanks to them, we can also innovate."

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