FläktGroup

FläktGroup was operating a large traditional on-premises environment. Their traditional on-premises architecture didn’t serve their global business and organizational structure. The group had IT professionals in several different countries, and they all had their own budgets and responsibilities. Additionally, they didn’t have proper visibility into where all their servers were located, which increased their business risk significantly. Access management and expense tracking were difficult because of the existing architecture, and it didn’t serve the group’s multi-country centralized IT. 

FläktGroup had a small environment on Microsoft Azure and had identified a need for an experienced specialized partner for the cloud adoption to guarantee a controlled migration and a sustainable cloud strategy. Together with Zure, FläktGroup decided to renew the whole architecture and future-proof their business by more comprehensively migrating to the cloud and expanding their Azure environment. Most traditional on-premises data centers were to be replaced with Azure technologies.

FläktGroup aimed to modernize and future-proof their IT solutions by extending their Azure environment. Cloud migration would also play a major part in their cost-tracking and cost-optimization ambitions. FläktGroup wanted to improve visibility, transparency, and control over their IT environment. This would be done by moving away from the traditional on-premises environment with data servers and responsibilities scattered all over the organization to modern cloud solutions with modern policies and optimized resources.

Thanks to FläktGroup’s solution-oriented and pro-development mindset, the project has faced a minimal number of issues. As the cooperation started, some challenges were harder to solve on Microsoft Azure and some features were challenging to crank up. During the cooperation, Azure has grown and improved its capabilities extensively which means that today, even some of the toughest business challenges are a lot easier to tackle with Azure’s services and features.

 One of the most important goals for the cooperation has been to decrease FläktGroup’s business risks, optimize costs, automate management routines, and set up common ground rules for management. Initially, FläktGroup had limited data and limited visibility into where all their business-crucial datacenters were located. With Zure’s Continuous Improvement and Services, they have been able to consolidate and significantly reduce their business risk as well as optimize their costs by utilizing Azure Reservations among other things. Spending has been reviewed from several perspectives to reduce costs and rightsize FläktGroup’s Azure resources. 

 As part of more comprehensive cost optimization, Zure has helped FläktGroup gain better insight into their spending by creative Power BI reports for visualization of their business-crucial data and more comprehensive visibility over their cost structure. Tags have been utilized in the management architecture to track spending and costs per location site.

“We have been very satisfied with Zure. I believe that both parties have benefitted and learned from the partnership, and it has resulted in us having a comprehensively better environment.”  

- Jesse Lahtela, FläktGroup 

 

The journey started with Azure consultancy and Managed Azure but has since covered a wide range of diverse cooperation in addition to the continuous improvement and services framework. The partnership will continue to expand to new areas of Zure’s expertise and will include application modernization and deploying DevOps methods. DevOps will help FläktGroup’s developers and their development teams to create more cost-effective and efficient development and IT functions. 

Zure aims to be FläktGroup’s comprehensive partner and a forward-thinking and productive extension of their Cloud Center of Excellence.

“Zure is the perfect mix of relaxed, good mood and super skills!” 

- Jesse Lahtela, FläktGroup

FläktGroup receives a lot of praise from Zure’s team of experts. The cooperation has been very exciting and pleasant it has been very satisfying to see results. As the cooperation has progressed into a longer partnership, we have gotten to know the customers and their challenges. This is a major advantage in building a relationship where the focus is more on getting things done and making an impact rather than on contract details that could hinder progress. 

FläktGroup’s willingness and capability to make investments that won’t give immediate payoff but will be well worthwhile in the long run has been the most crucial enabling factor for successful cooperation and partnership. FläktGroup has had a very openminded approach towards improvement suggestions and all suggestions for new solutions that would improve their cloud capabilities and reduce risks and costs. 

It has been professionally rewarding and interesting to Zure’s CIS experts to revamp the whole managed Azure architecture of a large global corporation and its IT environment. The wide range of cooperation and the vast potential in FläktGroup’s environment and global organization has been a great opportunity to be creative and use expertise broadly. Helping the customer to make the right choices and see them pay off and give results has been very inspiring.

“With such a wonderful customer with huge potential, who knows what we’re going to come up with next!”

- Juval Nadav, Platform Director, Zure