Exite ICT

What initially started for Exite ICT as a nice innovative solution for customers developed into a full data center. Slowly but surely, it became a business in of its own, requiring a lot of time, money and knowledge. Things that came at the expense of Exite's core business: being a service-oriented ICT service provider. So, it was time to outsource. The benefits seemed to be of great value to Exite's future. “Outsourcing our Cloud infrastructure has given us wings".

Robbie please tell, what was the specific question you approached Fundaments with?

Help I have a data center, now how do I get rid of it? Our data center started as an innovative customer solution. We saw a growing demand for Private Cloud in the market and we thought it would be great to be able to facilitate this ourselves for our customers. It started small, but before we knew it we had a full and complex data center with capacity management, power management, lifecycle management and you name it. We found out that managing and controlling our own data center is quite a task. And a risky task given the monthly Cloud contracts and the fact that customers purchase consumption-based resources. We needed to grow with customer demand, but at the same time had no guarantees that investments in hardware would pay off. When we faced a new investment for our data center, we asked ourselves whether outsourcing would be a better move.

What was the determining reason to actually outsource your Cloud infrastructure?

The customer. By going back to our base, we came to the conclusion that outsourcing was the only way to excel in our core business: being a service-oriented ICT service provider. We always put the customer first and the service we provide must be of the highest possible quality. We want to invest our time and money in that, not in hardware and managing a data centre. We also realised that we could no longer compete in the division of Private Cloud providers. That there are competitors who are much better at that than we are. We realised that we did not want to enter that battle because our expertise is on the platform, not in it. Outsourcing our Cloud infrastructure would free up more time for our core business and its innovation. We would be able to maximise our talent and thus make even more impact on our customers and their development. Once we had this clearly in mind, outsourcing was a no-brainer. It was the best choice for our clients. And thus for us.

How did you find Fundaments for this?

We did extensive research into Private Cloud providers in the Netherlands. A few parties came up, including Fundaments. They eventually jumped out for us because they are very specialised. There is no difficult proposition in it for both of us. It's very lean and mean. Fundaments simply stated: we are good at data centres, at Private Cloud, and you are good at what happens on the platform. It really appealed to us that there is no competition in this way, but that you really establish a co-creative relationship together. It turned out to be a perfect match.

Ronald, can you tell us more about the solution Fundaments provided for your outsourcing issue?

Fundaments provides the IaaS part of our services, or Infrastructure as a Service. In other words, they provide the foundation for our services. With that solution, our central questions were directly answered. Namely: how can we continue the services we already provide to our customers in a future-proof manner and how will we properly secure the sourcing of the systems we use for customers.

A clear solution, but transferring the workload of all your customers is obviously no small matter. How did Fundaments win your trust?

To be honest, we found it quite thrilling. You place an essential part of your service outside the door and that raises a lot of questions and concerns. Among other things, you wonder how customers will react, how it will be seen in the market, what it means for the people in our own data centre and how our services will remain guaranteed under this new partnership. Outsourcing is really a big step. Fundaments took the time, both technically and commercially, to answer all those questions and address our concerns. From the many conversations it became clear that Fundaments' ability to think along with us is very great, that our visions are close to each other, that they are flexible, that their technical knowledge is great and based on all these things we put our trust in them as a partner.

Your concerns had been addressed, but what about the concerns of customers?

Customers expect stability and performance across the systems they want to use. If we want to ensure that in a sustainable way, outsourcing is the only and best option. Our customers were on board with this statement. What was helpful is that the workload migration would have no impact on business continuity. The migration is fully automated and involves minimal downtime. We also schedule it outside office hours, so customers literally won't notice anything. Above all, we made it clear that our services will not change, they will only look different under the bonnet. And if anything changes in our services, it is because we have more time and space to innovate and excel. In short, outsourcing also brings benefits to the customer.

What is a concrete customer benefit of outsourcing to Fundaments?

Because we use Fundaments' services, we are able to offer additional functionalities. This will make it possible in the near future for our customers to, among other things, scale up and down resources themselves from a self-service portal. This is processed automatically under water. Customers no longer have to deal with this and neither do we.

What was the biggest challenge in the whole outsourcing issue?

Convincing our own staff, and specifically our tech staff, about why we are outsourcing this part of our services. We took them on this journey step by step and gave them perspective by showing them that it is a new beginning of how to fill services in a Hybrid Cloud strategy. That we now use the talents of the people who were working in the platform in order to help and advise customers. Because in that service delivery lies our strength. That is where we want to excel. By outsourcing, everyone can now work on our core business. Part of the tech staff from our data centre has now taken on the implementation for our customers within the Hybrid Cloud strategy. The other part is working on managing the customer environment within that Cloud environment. Together, we are therefore working on our mission to be the most service-oriented ICT service provider in the Netherlands.

Robbie, what does the collaboration with Fundaments mean for Exite's future?

A lot. Outsourcing our Cloud infrastructure has given us wings. Thanks to Fundaments' IaaS layer, we can invest our talent, time and resources in the things that really matter to Exite towards the future. A bright future which I see in collaboration with Fundaments. It's a very pleasant collaboration with a reliable partner. With real professionals. We can be sure our customers' environments are in good hands with Fundaments and that's worth a lot to us.

‍