The coronavirus pandemic appears to be a powerful driver of digitalization. It turns out that, in all walks of life, the use of innovative technologies and developments harbors vast potential. Yet there is another side to this coin: More and more companies are discovering that, as the digital transformation marches on, customers too are becoming more demanding. To satisfy these demands, companies must respond quickly and modernize their systems. In an emergency, doing so can literally be a matter of life or death.
That was the case for eurofunk, one of the biggest system specialists for planning, installing and operating control centers and emergency call centers. East-west traffic in particular had left eurofunk’s firewall desperately overloaded and straining at its limits. Thanks to VMware, however, the company has now successfully reconciled a Zero Trust model to flexible service provisioning, not to mention improving safety and usability. As a result, the system specialist is ideally placed to handle the growing demands of its emergency service customers in public safety, industry and transport.
Soft migration for seamless operation
Headquartered at St. Johann in Austria, eurofunk employs more than 500 experts and positions itself as a 360-degree solution partner for every aspect of control center technology. Utterly reliable operation commands top priority, along with greater quality and efficiency. Before the project in question was implemented, eurofunk had nevertheless found itself struggling with a traditional firewall that was overloaded above all by east-west traffic. Massive IT silos – systems with no connectivity whatsoever – were another problem. “We are known as an innovative company,” explains Günter Grünwald, Head of IT Core Services at eurofunk, “so we had to respond fast and modernize our systems.”
The system specialist teamed up with VMware and Bechtle IT-Systemhaus Österreich to map out a customized learning curve that would help them identify challenges and give visibility to connectivity between the individual services. Together, the decision was taken for a soft migration to VMware NSX that would not impair live operations. “Our objective was for the people employed here at eurofunk to not even notice the migration and be able to continue their work with no surprises,” says Martin Kaswurm, Head of IT Solutions at eurofunk. “And thanks to VMware, we hit that target 100%.” eurofunk also went ahead and deployed the products VMware vSphere for server virtualization and VMware Horizon. “Based on comprehensive preparation and planning, the implementation of VMware NSX went smoothly. As a result, eurofunk benefits from a new level in the use of innovative virtualization technology”, says Harald Schneider, Solution Architect, Bechtle IT-Systemhaus Österreich.
VMware – Rock-solid stability that is extremely flexible
With VMware NSX now in place, each individual workload receives exactly the protection it needs. Of the many ensuing benefits, eurofunk has also gained far greater flexibility as not all east-west traffic now has to be routed via the firewall. Thanks to VMware NSX, end users have a more stable and secure environment in which to work, with no outages for services and/or redundant systems, and no interruptions when switching between the office and home. Microsegmentation across the central IT systems also keeps vulnerability to a minimum.
“We have reduced the burden on the firewall by about two thirds. VMware NSX is definitely the right solution for us,” Grünwald says. Looking ahead, the plan is to deliver services in a private cloud. eurofunk is also thinking about implementing VMware SD-WAN to deliver the same high-quality support to remote development facilities as to the main development center. For its central IT landscape, the company’s vision is simply to deliver fast and reliable service to its customers in a flexible, dynamic environment – including services in the cloud in the future.
