When the staff of Forst Baden-Württemberg (ForstBW) is out and about today, they can work on a mobile basis and access the required data and applications from anywhere. This is made possible by the cloud-only strategy of ForstBW due to which the entire IT infrastructure and all associated IT processes were migrated to the Microsoft cloud. DATAGROUP was responsible for the rebuild as a strategic partner and operates the new structure in the cloud together with ForstBW.
The schedule for implementation of the entire IT in the cloud was tight. The project started in March 2019 and had to be completed by year end with no exception. This was because, from 1 January 2020, the former unified forest management in Baden-Württemberg was to be separated into two successor organizations: (1) Forst Baden-Württemberg, a public-law institution and self-funded entity, which is responsible for development and management of the state forest and for specific functions in forestry apprenticeships and Forest School pedagogy, and (2) the State Forest Management, responsible for communal and private forests as well as sovereign tasks. As part of this reorganization, the IT of the two organizations had to be completely separated as well.
ForstBW opted for a strict cloud-only approach, e.g. the company no longer has any on-premise servers. The data center and the complete office communication such as email, data storage or tools for cooperation and communication are available in the cloud. Several specialized procedures add to this, which are also made available via Microsoft Azure Cloud and are built on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
“The advantage of an implementation with the Microsoft cloud is that there are extensive standardized modular systems, amongst others, that allow you to build complex environments quickly and make them available to the customer tailored to their needs”, explains Holger Hennig, Area Manager Cloud Consulting at DATAGROUP. Security and compliance were another focus in the selection of appropriate service components. Using the corresponding Azure services, the cloud architects of DATAGROUP compiled a custom-fit and, correspondingly, robust integrated solution, which was also confirmed by the external auditors of ForstBW.
Thanks to the extensive project experience with design blueprints and the supplementary CORBOX services such as configuration and initial setup of the equipment as well as roll-out to the employees, the transformation to the cloud was completed as early as autumn 2019, in good time before the start of operations on 1 January 2020.
In addition to purely technical support, DATAGROUP also provided support to train the employees and was part of the multiplier concept where one person per location received specific training to then be the first contact for their colleagues.
“There are hardly any comparable projects in the public sector, but this pioneer project has paid off. Right at the start of ForstBW, on 1 January 2020, our employees could take up work at ForstBW with their new equipment and work on a flexible basis from anywhere. At the same time, the cloud service components enable us to quickly adapt and expand our IT infrastructure and applications in the future if required”, summarizes Carmen Hahn, project employee at ForstBW.
The amount of data that companies manage increases constantly. It is not always easy to maintain an overview and implement the right processes to keep the data up-to-date and compliant. One solution for this is Information Lifecycle Management, or ILM for short, developed by SAP AG. But before this solution can be implemented, companies should first get an overview of their data. This is exactly where DATAGROUP came in at LEAG. In a comprehensive analysis project, the data inventory was examined and recommendations were derived that will enable more efficient work in the future.
The energy company LEAG has huge volumes of data. The basis for the tender for an Information Lifecycle Management implementation in SAP were the requirements of the Basic Data Protection Regulation for a data protection compliant use of SAP systems. DATAGROUP convinced the company with its solution approach of performing a comprehensive analysis and clustering of the data. For a successful implementation of an ILM system, it is important to know the system and the data stock in detail.
In a project of around four months, DATAGROUP analyzed the SAP data base and conducted inteviews with each department about the available data. The goal was a realistic assessment of the existing data base and the related processes in order to set up suitable Information Lifecycle Processes.
The result was revealing and provides a valuable basis for cleaning up the data system before implementing an ILM solution, thereby not only increasing efficiency but also saving costs in concrete terms.
Among other things, it was established that the SAP system contains a very large amount of data, which is due to the fact that it has grown historically. DATAGROUP developed new, helpful concepts based on the analysis and made recommendations for reorganizing the system:
Chris Schulz
T +49 172 81 323 54
chris.schulz@datagroup.de
LEAG supplies electricity and heat for millions of households, industry and public life – reliably in all weather conditions, flexibly and affordably. This is what its approximately 7,400 employees work for. They make LEAG the largest energy company in eastern Germany and one of the most important private-sector employers and trainers in the Lausitz region. Around 3,300 partner companies support them with supplies and services in the mining and energy sectors.
www.leag.de
DATAGROUP signs 5-year contract with LBS Südwest for the outsourcing of IT services. LBS Südwest is the largest of the eight Landesbausparkassen (home loan and savings bank) in Germany with some 1.6 million customers. As the home loan association of the savings banks, LBS Südwest is a competent partner for all aspects of building, living, and financing in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate.
The cooperation focuses on services related to the user such as end device services, service desk, communication and collaboration services. In this respect, the modular design of DATAGROUP’s CORBOX suite of services allows for a customized selection of standard services. As early as in 2021, LBS Südwest has assured itself of DATAGROUP’s performance during some extensive market research. The outsourcing contract has a total volume in the double-digit million euro ranges.
Since July 2022, DATAGROUP is undergoing a transition phase with LBS Südwest. The services will be gradually taken over by DATAGROUP until the end of 2024 and will then be updated in a transformation process to state-of-the-art CORBOX standards. After completion of the transition and transformation process, the companies agreed on a cooperation for a period of five years. In detail, DATAGROUP will assume responsibility for the user-oriented IT services of LBS Südwest for some 1,300 users covering all of the below:
Ralf Küsell
ralf.kuesell@datagroup.de
For more information about Landesbausparkasse Südwest please visit www.LBS-SW.de
RATIONAL, one of the leading manufacturers of kitchen appliances for commercial kitchens, relies on the SAP-based maintenance solution OPRA from DATAGROUP for its maintenance. The mobile solution can be used directly where the maintenance staff needs it: On site in the plant. Intuitive interfaces and simple prioritization of tasks enable RATIONAL to make maintenance more efficient.
The OPRA maintenance solution is based 100% on SAP technology and was therefore easy to integrate into the existing SAP system landscape at RATIONAL. It was important for the company that the solution could be used on a mobile basis so that the maintenance staff, who move around a lot in the plant, are supported directly on site. OPRA meets this requirement with intuitive apps that make paper-based maintenance processes superfluous. This allows the maintenance technician to view all necessary information directly on site at the machine and provide feedback via the app. This also ensures that the latest information is always available in real time in RATIONAL’s systems, as manual transfer of the data is no longer required.
RATIONAL has a comprehensive priority concept. As standard, three priorities can be selected in SAP: High, Medium and Low. However, RATIONAL has individual, specific prioritizations. With the help of OPRA, all messages in the system can be prioritized accordingly and transferred to the mobile devices by the maintenance staff. The maintenance staff can sort the list of their tasks by priority so that they can see at a glance the tasks with the highest priority, group them and process them accordingly.
Henriette Wander
Henriette.Wander@datagroup.de
+49 731 93542-815
For over 46 years, RATIONAL has been committed to providing its customers with the best tools for cooking. When they started out in 1973 with just 18 employees, no one suspected that this resolution would be the basis of a success story.
RATIONAL does not see itself purely as a machine builder, but as an innovative solution provider. Their first and last thought is the satisfaction of their customers. This vision has made RATIONAL the global market and technology leader. As a result, 140 million meals are prepared in RATIONAL appliances around the world every day.
With over 1,000,000 appliances on the market, their cooking systems have become the standard in professional kitchens around the world. The fact that they are on the right track is confirmed by 98% of their customers in the relevant markets of Germany, the UK and the USA in the 2018 Kantar TNS study: they would recommend RATIONAL to others.
Kombiverkehr Deutsche Gesellschaft für kombinierten Güterverkehr mbH & Co. KG connects the whole of Europe with transport services for combined road and rail freight traffic. The logistics service provider, whose services have been aimed at freight forwarders and transport companies since 1969, has set itself the goal of making roads safer and helping to reduce global CO2 emissions by providing Europe-wide connections between the transport modes of truck, rail and ship. For the chemical industry, for example, Kombiverkehr is a preferred partner because, according to the German Federal Statistical Office, hazardous goods are 40 times safer on the railways than on the roads. But the customer base also includes other major industries, from automotive and mechanical engineering to manufacturers of household appliances and consumer electronics to textiles and food. In 2017, more than 960,000 shipments, each equivalent to the volume of a truckload, were transported via Kombiverkehr connections.
The logistics company, whose partners include Deutsche Bahn Cargo and 230 national and international freight forwarders, also continues its high security standards in the design of its IT processes. When Kombiverkehr planned to outsource its infrastructure operated at the Frankfurt location to professional data centers, it found a partner at eye level in the IT service provider DATAGROUP.
“There was already a plan to outsource to an external data center many years ago when the company moved to its current location. This could not be implemented economically due to high data communication costs, and the company procured its own hardware and infrastructure. The recent need for replacement was the current trigger for outsourcing to an external data center,” says Gerhard Dittrich, former IT manager and project officer at Kombiverkehr, describing the start of the project. “The need to replace the emergency power generators installed on Kombiverkehr’s roof was then particularly decisive. The cost of replacing them and thus also of operational reliability would have been disproportionately high.”
In the IT working group with IT managers from Kombiverkehr and its partners, the move to a professional data center was advocated, also in order to prevent possible future personnel bottlenecks via 24×7 operation. Thus, Kombiverkehr initially tendered a managed service project, which was finalized in 2019 due to content changes and additions. “At Kombiverkehr, we have been using SER Group’s Doxis document management solution for several years,” explains Gerhard Dittrich. “Through SER, the connection to DATAGROUP in Frankfurt came about as part of the tender, as SER has had its software solution hosted in their data center for quite some time.”
The managed services concept of DATAGROUP convinced Kombiverkehr and so they were commissioned with a 4-week proof of concept in 2019. “Decisive for our decision for DATAGROUP as a managed service provider were, in addition to the technical concept, our experiences with the hosting of the document management system Doxis and the cooperation in the bidding phase,” recalls Mr. Dittrich. “From the very beginning, we had our personal contact persons and a very pleasant and constructive interaction at eye level. These aspects then paid off especially in the spring of 2020, when Corona delayed the planned start of the project. Although important appointments with the building authority and our building owner to coordinate new line connections could not take place, DATAGROUP reacted very accommodatingly, handled everything remotely for us and flexibly adapted contracts to the situation.”
Jürgen Maier
Sales Manager
juergen.maier@datagroup.de
The overall concept, with which DATAGROUP was commissioned, provided for the takeover and 24×7 operation of the redundant infrastructure distributed over two data centers with 99.8% availability and likewise redundant, edge- and node-disjoint lines via new dark fiber connections. This required a complete rebuild of a higher-performance, high-availability hardware environment based on the latest technology. This environment was to meet the growth and performance requirements over the next few years. Another important step was to move the hypervisor from XEN to VMware, achieve faster response times through flash storage, and backup via Veeam and TSM. Operations continued to include Microsoft Active Directory, nearly 200 Microsoft Exchange mailboxes, the entire VMware environment and Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
For a clear regulation of the transitions of responsibility, the migration was divided into three ramp-up phases:
The division into three phases not only ensured more reliable project management, it also helped Kombiverkehr, particularly in terms of the ability to plan monthly costs. “By introducing the trades step by step in three major project phases, we only ever incurred costs for operation once another subsection had been successfully completed,” says Gregor Lotz, Team Leader IT System Administration and Project Coordinator at Kombiverkehr, citing the advantages. At the same time, the phased migration ensured that there were no outages that affected day-to-day business. “At the heart of our business is our in-house developed logistics software for planning freight and routes,” explains Gerhard Dittrich. “Our logistics customers rent freight trains from us, and their customers in turn rent partial freight from them. If delays in IT mean that rail slots are gone and freight trains therefore have to stop at night, we have a problem. Therefore, everything had to be done to make the migration as quiet as possible.”
In order not to take on old burdens such as old drivers or old data that would have to be cleaned up again afterwards, only the current data was migrated and loaded directly onto the new version of the new hardware. The initial skepticism about the added value of the managed services quickly evaporated. “We were supported by DATAGROUP at any time at short notice and even outside the agreed framework,” says Gregor Lotz, praising the commitment of his new managed service provider. “With a very good understanding of our business and our requirements, we have found a reliable partner in DATAGROUP that optimally complements our team and is available to us at all times. We could never manage this with our own team, especially with regard to future new requirements.”
Since the migration to DATAGROUP’s data centers, other areas have already been transferred to managed services, such as the operation of the Fortinet infrastructure with firewalls and switches as well as virtual machines, which were previously the responsibility of Kombiverkehr and have now been transferred to DATAGROUP’s operations based on SLAs.
“Particularly in an age of skills shortages, when it is becoming increasingly difficult to find IT specialists, it feels good to be able to place operational responsibility securely in the hands of service providers,” says Christoph Büchner, citing the benefits he sees in managed service models. As the new Head of IT at Kombiverkehr, Christoph Büchner has been steering the strategic direction since his predecessor Gerhard Dittrich went into well-earned retirement. “Currently, we are working on the migration of our Comarch ERP system environment from IBM i to a virtualized environment. For this task, too, we know where to get reliable support if needed.”
When an entire company wants to set up all end devices anew, it is a logistical and organizational challenge. For the rollout of new hardware and software, SCHWENK decided to work with its partner DATAGROUP. The employees handed in their devices, took part in training, and at the end of the training, they received their devices back from DATAGROUP – newly set up with Microsoft Office 365 and the new Citrix environment – and were able to continue working immediately.
The rollout of the new environment under the motto “SCHWENK One”, which brought all employees in Germany up to the same technical standard, was to take place on a very tight schedule. Since the originally planned service provider did not meet SCHWENK’s requirements, DATAGROUP was brought on board at short notice and proved to be fast and flexible.
The users were the focus of the project for both companies. The target group was very diverse and ranged from employees who regularly work on the computer to those who rarely need access. It was important to cater to all employees and thus ensure a smooth transition to the new environment.
The employees delivered their old hardware in the morning and then took part in a training session on the new software. In the course of this morning, DATAGROUP employees “refueled” both existing devices and the new end devices on site according to the new uniform standards. At the end of the training, these were then available to the employees so that they could continue working immediately. DATAGROUP also provided support in case of queries.
DATAGROUP’s partnership claim was evident at numerous points in the project. On the one hand, DATAGROUP was able to build up a team at very short notice and thus meet SCHWENK’s schedule. On the other hand, DATAGROUP stepped in when there were problems with the shipping of the new hardware that would have delayed the schedule and replaced the shipping company by bringing the hardware to the users on site themselves. DATAGROUP also always stood by SCHWENK on site, ensuring strict compliance with the corona-related hygiene concept and finding solutions when it was determined that the on-site network had reached its limits during training and hardware changeover.
Henriette Wander
Henriette.Wander@datagroup.de
+49 731 93542-815
The Schwenk company was founded in Ulm in 1847. SCHWENK Zement GmbH & Co.KG is one of the oldest family-owned companies in the German building materials industry. Today, the company is one of the most modern and innovative manufacturers in the industry. It combines a wealth of experience in which the cement, concrete, sand & gravel and pump divisions act as one value chain.
Three years ago, Miele made a decision: In the future, mobile processes were to be established in maintenance. Most of the plants of the traditional German company use the SAP module EAM for maintenance. The associated processes are manually controlled and information runs on paper. The extensive search for a system that could meaningfully supplement SAP EAM with digital processes resulted in the decision for OPRA at the beginning of 2018. Since the beginning of 2019, the SAP-based application from DATAGROUP for the maintenance of mobile and stationary systems and devices has been available for all Miele plants. Using process-oriented user interfaces, the application provides comprehensive and contextual information at the touch of a button on any mobile device. OPRA is fully integrated into SAP and enhances the EAM module with a user-friendly process design
Oliver Braun from the “Smart Maintenance” department at Miele & Cie. KG has been working in the appliance manufacturing plant at the Gütersloh site for 33 years. “What we particularly liked about OPRA in a detailed comparison with competitor products was the embedding without interfaces in SAP and the very coherent user guidance. The license model in connection with SAP was also interesting. Overall, DATAGROUP offered the most economical alternative,” he says, explaining the product decision.
DATAGROUP uses the Fiori Client SAP for its maintenance solution and thus picks up the concept of the new SAP user interfaces in its software – another plus point for Miele. Fiori runs on any browser, on the PC as well as on the tablet or smartphone. The maintenance software also accesses SAP directly, without interfaces or middleware in between.
The practical OPRA deployment at Miele started at the German sites in Gütersloh, Bielefeld and Oelde; the international plants are to be added step by step in the short to medium term. The laundry care competence center is located in Gütersloh. Dishwashers and vacuum cleaners are manufactured in Bielefeld, stoves and ovens in Oelde. In Gütersloh alone, around 5,250 people work for Miele. The production equipment in these plants is now maintained with OPRA, as is the technical building equipment. Using the OPRA apps on their mobile devices, the maintenance staff can filter out their own jobs and directly charge back the working time spent.
This relieves the administrative area enormously. In OPRA, operating instructions and all other documents for the relevant component are stored behind each order and can be displayed. “At the point of value creation, everyone has all the information they need,” says Oliver Braun. When inspecting a lift truck, for example, no one has to fill out a piece of paper with the master data, scan it and save it in SAP. The individual items of a checklist are checked off directly on the mobile device, and at the end OPRA automatically generates an inspection report as a PDF and stores it in Miele’s document management system.
Cross-Plant Services is a separate department with its own maintenance team. This department also works with the new solution in the entire range of possible applications: whether in the forklift workshop, for the maintenance of dock levellers, for safety inspections of fire doors, repairs of sanitary facilities, and much more. At the final stage, 400 mobile devices will be distributed at Miele with the OPRA client, at all – also – foreign sites that currently work with SAP. Smaller plants without SAP will follow. In addition, Miele wants to integrate its production workers, who are traditionally involved in the maintenance process, via OPRA as well.
In the meantime, the software release 2.2.2 has been successfully introduced in close cooperation. Many individual wishes on the part of Miele have been incorporated into the upgrade to the new release.
Henriette Wander
Henriette.Wander@datagroup.de
+49 731 93542-815
Miele is the world’s leading supplier of premium domestic appliances for cooking, baking, steam cooking, refrigeration/freezing, coffee preparation, dishwashing, laundry and floorcare. In addition, there are dishwashers, washing machines and dryers for commercial use, as well as washer-disinfectors and sterilizers for medical facilities and laboratories (Professional business area). Founded in 1899, the company operates eight production sites in Germany, one plant each in Austria, the Czech Republic, China, Romania and Poland, as well as the two plants of the Italian medical technology subsidiary Steelco Group. Sales in fiscal 2020 were around 4.5 billion euros (of which in Germany: 29.5 percent). Miele is represented in nearly 100 countries/regions by its own sales companies or through importers. Worldwide, the fourth-generation family-run group employs around 20,900 people, about 11,050 of them in Germany. The company is headquartered in Gütersloh, Westphalia.
Mobile maintenance with OPRA facilitates machine maintenance at DANA Incorporated – successful GoLive at the Györ (Hungary) and Neu-Ulm (Germany) plants.
In the plants of the globally active automotive supplier DANA Incorporated, production units are now increasingly networked via sensors. Predictive maintenance, as enabled by OPRA, is a key vehicle for achieving the goals of such Industry 4.0 scenarios. Therefore, when the Hungarian DANA Hungary Gyártó Kft. based in Györ implemented the SAP module EAM (Enterprise Asset Management – formerly Plant Maintenance) – one year after the general SAP introduction – the SAP-integrated solution OPRA for maintenance and service management from DATAGROUP was also introduced in the same breath. Its mobile use in particular is proving to be an enormous advantage in the day-to-day work of the maintenance staff. OPRA complements the SAP EAM system with its user-friendliness, process orientation, seamless integration of third-party systems and enables a functional and visual integration of assets, people, processes, data and systems in SAP.
At the Hungarian plant, maintenance staff used to work with Excel lists and paper forms to record faults on their machines and carry out maintenance. In May, SAP EAM and the latest version of OPRA went live – four desktop applications for the employees in the back office, who can use them to create operational planning and reports with the most important key performance indicators, as well as the mobile version OPRAmobile with three apps for the approximately 15 maintenance staff outside at the machines. DANA commissioned DATAGROUP with project management, conception, implementation and customer-specific further development. The implementation was completed within four months. After the plant in Györ, OPRA was also rolled out to the plant in Neu-Ulm and put into production.
The maintenance staff use the solution for complete machine maintenance, maintenance planning, and support for setup and tool exchange processes. They can enter feedback, reserve or remove spare parts, and view historical data on repairs or maintenance for each technical system or machine in real time. The 100% integration in SAP enables a smooth data exchange with other SAP modules such as warehouse, purchasing, production or controlling. The maintenance department can also enable external staff to use OPRA in order to avoid additional work due to duplicate data entry and to maintain data quality at the highest level.
With the current version of OPRAmobile, maintenance staff are provided with a number of additional processes and tasks on a mobile basis. Specifically, they work with three new apps: Via “OPRAmobile Technical Master Data” they can query relevant master data or historical data on a technical object, view current orders and notifications with object reference, use relevant documents and videos or install and remove equipment. In “OPRAmobile notifications” new notifications are created and existing ones are available for editing. “OPRAmobile Orders” covers the complete process of mobile order processing and feedback.
Anja Scheibner-Weiss, Business Analyst in the IT Department of DANA Power Technologies at the Neu-Ulm site, was closely involved in the implementation in Hungary and Neu-Ulm. “The difference between mobile app and the previous work in the pure SAP GUI is enormous,” she explains. “There are many more steps in the ERP system: You have to create a notification about a malfunction, turn it into an order and then create a confirmation. OPRAmobile combines these steps into one. And above all, the maintenance staff can initiate them on their tablet while standing directly at the machine and transfer them, including photos, comments and associated documents, to SAP EAM.
In contrast to other sites, there is no strict separation of maintenance and production in the plants; the maintenance staff therefore also take on activities such as filling out checklists at the change of shift on the condition of an item of equipment (a machine or a tool) in accordance with regulations.
Anja Scheibner-Weiss: “This is particularly important for the audits required in the automotive supply industry. Without any media discontinuity, the maintenance staff send their start-up checklists to SAP with a digital signature. This makes it possible to quickly and reliably track which tool has been checked and is ready for further use.”
In contrast to the Hungarian plant, SAP EAM had already been in use for some time at the DANA site in Neu-Ulm. Here, the focus was therefore on simplification, process optimization and mobilization through OPRA. OPRA is 100% integrated with SAP, facilitates support and thus consolidates the strategic use of SAP in the company. Initial considerations for a strategic rollout in the DANA Group have already been made.
Henriette Wander
Henriette.Wander@datagroup.de
+49 731 93542-815
DANA is a leading global supplier of powertrains, sealing systems and thermal management products. Technologies from DANA increase the efficiency and performance of passenger cars, commercial and “off-highway” vehicles with both conventional and alternative drive concepts. The DANA network consists of approximately 100 development, manufacturing and distribution centers around the world. OEM and aftermarket customers thus have access to their local product service almost everywhere.
For the cytostatics product group, Teva’s existing SAP consignemt app was to be adapted to the new processes due to a new warehouse structure. Teva chose DATAGROUP as its redesign partner. With the new app, cytostatics can be picked smartly by scan and touch. Via this mobile solution, employees have an overview of what is currently in the consigment worklist at all times.
The goal of the project was to adapt an existing web app to a redesigned order process. The existing app was part of a larger app infrastructure developed in-house by Teva, which had many interfaces with existing architectures and legacy systems.
The challenge for DATAGROUP was to adapt the app in this complex framework so that it both met the new requirements and took into account the existing interactions. DATAGROUP succeeded in implementing these requirements of Teva accordingly and adapting the app to the processes.
Process reliability is ensured by this mobile solution and supporting scanner function.
The app offers the possibility to scan and verify the storage location as well as the goods and container barcodes via a counter-scan. This represents a fundamental simplification in the process. Furthermore, the app covers different picking structures – from a single package to a full original carton. Depending on the selected process, users use a barcode on a transport tray for single picking or stick a continuous barcode on an original carton. These barcodes can be used at any time to identify what contents are in the package and to which customer shipment the package belongs. This process gives Teva a real-time overview of which deliveries have already been processed and which are still open.
With the help of the app, the picker also has the option of directly posting an inventory. As soon as a storage bin becomes empty during the picking process – whether due to a regular stock reduction of the bin to zero or a difference booking – the app automatically opens an inventory window in which an inventory booking can be confirmed.
Another benefit of the app is that during the picking process, damaged goods can be booked out directly at the storage location using the mobile solution. This makes the work of the pickers much easier and supports them directly in their processes.
Gerhard Wies
Senior Sales Manager
Gerhard.Wies@datagroup.de
M +49 160 96923745
T +49 731 93542-188
Our approximately 2,400 employees work every day to simplify access to medicines for millions of people and give patients back a bit of independence. Be it through our medicines – innovative specialty drugs, generics and over-the-counter drugs – a favorable price or a special service. With ratiopharm, Germany’s best-known pharmaceutical brand also belongs to Teva Germany.
Teva’s German headquarters is in Ulm. Another production site is in Blaubeuren/Weiler.
DATAGROUP took over the IT carve-out from the former parent company for STARK Germany, a leading construction retailer. In the future, DATAGROUP will manage Service Desk, Data Center, Mobile Device Management, End User Services and Network Services in IT outsourcing for the company.
In the course of the carve-out from the former parent company Saint Gobain, DATAGROUP not only reorganized the complex underlying infrastructure, but also equipped the approximately 5,000 employees with new end devices.
Saint Gobain’s relatively complex infrastructure and IT requirements meant that the standard migration approach via Veeam backup software could not be implemented. DATAGROUP therefore chose an agile approach in close cooperation with the French IT department of the former parent company. The servers were backed up to hard drives and transported by car to Germany, where they were restored at the DATAGROUP data center. Thanks to this unusual but flexible approach, the migration was completed without any impact on the daily work of Stark employees.
The user devices also had to be reset. The aim was to design the backup of the user data as simple as possible. DATAGROUP developed its own tool for this purpose. Via a stick, the users can download the tool from their own intranet, can backup all data via a simple, intuitive interface and transfer it via the stick to the new PC. Data sovereignty thus remains with the customer. With the new devices, the users are fully operational again in just 30 minutes.
Following the IT carve-out, DATAGROUP will provide the following services to STARK in the future:
Hartmut Graf
T +49 2241 904 225
hartmut.graf@datagroup.de
Locations
Employees
Month IT Carve-Out
STARK Deutschland GmbH is part of the STARK GROUP, headquartered in Copenhagen. As Germany’s leading building materials retailer, STARK Deutschland is at the forefront of 11 strong building materials brands at 220 locations.
From generalists to specialists, from building construction to civil engineering, STARK in the network supplies all the building materials that professionals from a wide range of trades need. Including a wide range of helpful services.
