Admeco – High tech operations with 360° desktop.

Starting point.

Admeco AG delivers hi-tech medical technology from the heart of Switzerland to around the world. Located in Hochdorf near Lucerne, the company has been producing innovative and secure systems for modern operating theatres, recovery rooms and intensive care wards for over 30 years.

From inhouse infrastructure to the cloud. Admeco AG has been a customer of Bechtle since 2008 and had been running an on-premise server until they made the switch to the cloud in 2012. The installation was regularly maintained through on-site support as Admeco doesn’t have any in-house IT employees. The inhouse solution was based on a virtualised environment and the users worked on a standardised desktop environment. As the on-premise infrastructure was reaching its limits, in 2012 an investment in hardware was announced. Admeco AG put the two solutions – cloud and inhouse infrastructure – out to tender. In the end, the decisive factor was the requirements the cloud was able to fulfil: security, availability and stability.

Project objectives.

Security. Admeco didn’t have a proper server room, recalls Jelle van den Wildenberg, Managing Director, Admeco AG. They didn’t have fire extinguishing or cooling systems. Investments in a server infrastructure are complex and costly and even then, security isn’t a given.“Security was a top priority for us. Not necessarily theft, but the physical safety of the data”, says Jelle van den Wildenberg. “The probability that our servers would be damaged is much higher than if they were in a data centre. I’m absolutely sure that the Colozüri data centre is very secure.” And if something does happen at Bechtle's data centre such as a technical failure, a redundant system ensures that operations are not interrupted: Admeco data are redundantly protected in the Colozüri data centre according to the highest international Tier 4 standard guidelines. Security also means independence: If something should happen to make working at the company’s offices impossible, the cloud would mean that work could be continued elsewhere. “If something happens, I can just pull the plug in Hochdorf and carry on working somewhere else, which really like”, says Jelle van den Wildenberg. “With the cloud, we are physically independent.”
 

Process.

Availability and stability. With only 20 users, Admeco is a small company. “For us, it’s important that the environment be professional. The system is now much more stable and the availability is excellent”, says Jelle van den Wildenberg. With the cloud, there aren’t any downtimes which leave employees unable to work. This means that there are no more unplanned investments for maintenance and troubleshooting. Availability and plannable costs were both critical points for Jelle van den Wildenberg when deciding on the cloud: “I liked the idea that I only have to pay for what I use and that I also get a stable system.” The cloud’s stability can also be explained by the IT infrastructure technology in the data centre. For small companies, the time and costs needed to keep their own hardware consistently up-to-date are very high. “IT is an industry that is constantly advancing and hardware becomes obsolete very quickly. If you buy technology, it has to be written off over four or five years”, says Jelle van den Wildenberg.
 

Solution.

Customer portal. Admeco has access to a customer portal which enables an administrator to quickly and easily add new employees who then have access to the cloud in under ten minutes. This is a massive benefit for Jelle van den Wildenberg because it means they don’t always need to request support from Bechtle: “The customer portal is extremely user-friendly. A new employee, even one in Germany, is linked up with the cloud and can start working in a snap.”

Business benefits.

CAD data – a special case. For the extensive 3D CAD files, the technical performance is not yet enough to work smoothly with the cloud. This means that designers log in to a second on-premise computer as well as the cloud when working with CAD programs. Data are saved overnight in the data centre through synchronisation. The site is connected via an MPLS. Admeco relies on Bechtle's on-site support to manage end devices using various services such as firewalls, anti-virus and thin clients. Employees in Switzerland and Germany access data from mobile end devices as securely as from office PCs. Admeco has not regretted their switch to the cloud and Jelle van den Wildenberg is sure they won’t in the future either: “We’re on the right track with the cloud and there’s no satopping our IT now!“