EXPRO it

WouterMertens, founder & co-owner, and Jeroen Busschers, co-owner &Operational Manager at EXPRO it, share in this success story how theircollaboration with Fundaments enables their end customers to focus on theircore business.

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Wouter, how did the collaboration with Fundaments originate? 

Wouter: “In 2009,we won the starter’s award with EXPRO it, which brought me into contact with Dennis. At the time, Dennis worked at Oxilion, which has since become part of Fundaments. Initially, no collaboration resulted from that meeting. That only happened later, in 2011.”

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What challenge did you approach Fundaments with at that time? 

Jeroen: “Before 2011, we mainly focused on staffing services. In 2011, we entered the MSP market with a cloud-first approach. Our first client at the time needed servers in a data center. That’s when we reconnected with Oxilion, and the collaboration began. When Fundaments was founded from within Oxilion, we became customer number 1—and that’s still our customer number today.”

Wouter: “Our core challenge hasn't really changed. The technology, of course, has evolved, but we still deliver the same service to our customers.”

Jeroen: “Yes, we’re still buying the same 'Lego blocks' from Fundaments, and the basics are still the same. We do regularly discuss new developments with Fundaments so we can keep improving together in the future.”

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Has customer demand changed over the years? 

Jeroen: “Yes. We’re seeing more and more software packages that no longer require their own servers—especially in the SMB segment. That’s one of the reasons we started using VMware Horizon. What’s interesting for Fundaments is when a client still has an application that hasn’t moved to the cloud yet. A great example is our case with Metaversus, a new customer. Together with Fundaments, we’re really operating as one team there. Metaversus wants a development environment to bridge two applications. One of their engineers currently still manages the server environment himself, which takes up a lot of time. That responsibility is now being shifted entirely to Fundaments and EXPRO it. This allows the engineer to focus on what he does best—and what he enjoys most.”

Wouter: “The big advantage of our collaboration with Fundaments is that we no longer have to make major investments in hardware or bring in additional expertise in-house. That means we can also focus on our core business while everyone sticks to their specialty.”

Jeroen: “And to add to that: with Fundaments, it’s always very clear what you pay for and what you get in return. That’s not always the case with hyperscalers.”

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Whatare the most important services for you? 

Jeroen: “Cohesity is really important for us. Fundaments introduced this to us, and it was a very cost-effective solution. The technology is unique in the market when it comes to data volume, and it has been a real success for us.

vSAN has also been very successful for our client Mitsubishi—they’ve never achieved such high speeds with their database transactions before.

And VMware Horizon is something where we’re truly unique for our customers. It’s a virtual desktop service that we source from Fundaments. It’s easy and quick to set up, especially in combination with Fundaments’ VMware environment. This allows us to deliver a better and faster desktop experience for the end user.”

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When is a partnership with a Cloud provider like Fundaments successful for you? 

Wouter: “When our customers are happy.”

Jeroen: “Exactly that. But also when there’s real collaboration and brainstorming for each individual client, because every use case is unique. It’s about co-creating great new solutions and staying innovative.

For mission-critical organizations like Mitsubishi, it’s also essential that the cloud provider is alert. Fundaments definitely is—they inform us right away if something is going on. And on top of that, things are just always very stable with Fundaments.”

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What did you and Fundaments accomplish for Mitsubishi? 

Jeroen: “We created a solution for Mitsubishi that allows them to instantly display their 3D models online, from anywhere in the world. We set up an entire data center environment to make that possible. Fundaments provided the servers and handles the VMware Horizon licenses.

Do you have any fun anecdotes about working together?

Wouter: “One of our first major clients was Inspirit, part of DNV. In 2011, this division had to split off from the organization within six weeks. Two continents, three countries, and 120 consultants had to transition seamlessly. We thought: we’re just going to do this. Of course, we needed Fundaments for that. They had a number of servers that we brought under our management at Fundaments. Since then, I’ve always thought: if we pulled that off, why wouldn’t we succeed at anything else?”

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Whatdoes the future with Fundaments look like for you?  

Wouter: “Very promising and full of confidence.”

Jeroen: “Exactly. I’m not even looking at other providers. Our colleagues sometimes suggest trying a hyperscaler. I then ask them to provide a cost estimate, and they always respond with: ‘I can’t say exactly.’ At that point, I’m done.

What I really enjoy with Fundaments is brainstorming about new developments so we can always deliver the best possible solution to our customers.”