The internationally successful medical technology manufacturer runs its entire IT on the Nutanix Cloud Platform to support growth and innovation and to be able to react quickly to new business requirements.
DÜRR DENTAL initially provided digital workspaces for its globally distributed users via a Nutanix platform in its own data center. Following the positive experience with the Citrix environment, the company further expanded the environment together with IT partner IF-Tech. The IT team migrated all virtual machines from VMware to Nutanix AHV and also consolidated file services on the Nutanix platform. As a result, DÜRR DENTAL now benefits from a unified, centrally managed IT infrastructure that can meet growing demands.
Easily scalable platform for all workloads
Today, DÜRR DENTAL runs virtual desktops, applications, and servers, as well as all file services, on Nutanix clusters in its own data center. When requirements increase, the environment can be easily expanded during operation.
High operational efficiency and fast troubleshooting
The IT team can manage all resources via a single interface and install updates across the entire environment with one click. Centralized monitoring with Nutanix Prism enables short response times in the event of disruptions.
Resilience and reliability for critical applications
With the Nutanix platform, DÜRR DENTAL supports the high-availability operation of business-critical applications, such as those in the production environment. Nutanix Data Lens also helps protect against unauthorized access.
Five years after the introduction of the first Nutanix clusters, we are still fully convinced of our strategy. The Nutanix platform now forms the foundation for the secure and efficient operation of all important workloads at DÜRR DENTAL.
Almost everyone who has ever visited a dentist has likely been treated using products from DÜRR DENTAL. For 85 years now, the company, headquartered in Bietigheim-Bissingen, has been a reliable partner for dental practices and dental laboratories all over the world. DÜRR DENTAL develops and produces system solutions in the areas of practice supply, suction, diagnostic systems, dental preservation, and hygiene. Worldwide, the group currently employs around 1,400 people and most recently generated revenue of more than €381 million and serves customers in 174 countries.
DÜRR DENTAL stands for quality “Made in Germany” and consistently sets new standards in the market with its products. The company consistently invests in research and development and is now one of the pioneers in AI-supported software platforms for dentistry, among other things. In 2025, DÜRR DENTAL was named “Germany’s most innovative medium-sized company” by WirtschaftsWoche and the management consultancy Munich Strategy.
“IT plays a central role in the success of our company,” says Wolfgang Zehner, Head of ICT Infrastructure at DÜRR DENTAL SE. “We need a high-performance infrastructure to support the numerous digital processes—from development and production to sales and marketing. In addition, with IT, we are creating the conditions for our teams at all locations to be able to work together efficiently.”
However, the existing IT infrastructure at DÜRR DENTAL reached its limits about five years ago. Storage and computing capacities could no longer keep up with the company’s rapid growth – and necessary expansions were always associated with a great deal of effort. “We came from a classic 3-tier architecture and were also still operating historically grown structures from the Novell world,” reports Matthias Reaves, who is responsible for Data Center Services at DÜRR DENTAL. “At some point, we realized that this complex environment with its many IT silos was slowing down our development. Therefore, we decided to fundamentally modernize the infrastructure.”
In the first phase of this transformation process, the focus was primarily on the users’ digital workspaces. With the support of IT partner IF-Tech, DÜRR DENTAL developed a modern digital workplace concept for its globally distributed employees. This was based on desktop virtualization technology from Citrix and a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) from Nutanix. The project partners implemented two redundant Nutanix clusters in the DÜRR DENTAL data center and made the virtual desktops and business applications available to all users via this platform.
The new infrastructure concept met the expectations of the DÜRR DENTAL IT team right from the start. “With Nutanix, we were able to provide the resources for our Citrix environment very quickly and did not have to invest a lot of time in building the infrastructure first,” says Wolfgang Zehner. “The Nutanix platform provides us with compute, storage, and networking capabilities in a turnkey solution from a single vendor and also includes a powerful hypervisor with Nutanix AHV. This has enormously accelerated the rollout of the new digital workspaces.”
After the good experiences in the Citrix environment, the IT team decided to also run all other IT systems on the Nutanix platform in the future. Together with IF-Tech, they set up two additional clusters in the data center and gradually migrated several hundred virtual machines from the previous VMware infrastructure to Nutanix AHV.
“The transition went completely smoothly,” reports Matthias Reaves. “With the help of IF-Tech and the migration tool Nutanix Move, we were able to move almost all workloads to the new infrastructure within a few months—and without any disruption to business operations.”
As part of the modernization, DÜRR DENTAL also consolidated its file services on the Nutanix platform. Distributed file servers with heterogeneous structures and management models were replaced by Nutanix Files Storage and integrated into the hyperconverged infrastructure. The goal was to provide file services centrally, make them easier to manage, and secure them uniformly. In addition, the analysis and security solution Nutanix Data Lens is now being used to make data access more transparent and to detect potential threats such as ransomware attacks at an early stage.
Simplified management and transparency across the entire environment
The switch to the Nutanix platform has helped DÜRR DENTAL significantly reduce the complexity of its IT environment. Almost all important workloads—from virtual desktops and server applications to file services—now run on a unified and centrally managed infrastructure. With Nutanix Prism, the IT department can manage all resources via a single interface and always keep an eye on the performance and availability of all systems.
“The Nutanix Life Cycle Manager, in particular, takes a lot of work off our hands in everyday life,” emphasizes Wolfgang Zehner. “We can install updates on all systems with one click and no longer have to deal with dependencies between individual software and firmware components. This saves us time and frees up time for more strategic initiatives.”
Troubleshooting has also become easier in the hyperconverged infrastructure. The causes of technical problems or performance bottlenecks can, for example, be narrowed down and analyzed much faster. “In the past, we often didn't know exactly whether it was the storage, the hypervisor, or the network, and we sometimes spent several days troubleshooting,” says Matthias Reaves. “The Nutanix platform offers us complete transparency here and thus significantly reduces the time needed to identify and resolve root causes. And for more complex issues, we can rely on the really excellent support from Nutanix.”
Reliable operation and better protection against ransomware
With the Nutanix platform, DÜRR DENTAL operates its business-critical applications on an infrastructure designed for high availability. The cluster architecture ensures that workloads continue to run even during maintenance work or unplanned failures of individual components. “We have a fault tolerance of two nodes in the cluster. This means that even if two nodes were to fail at the same time, we can still provide all workloads,” explains Matthias Reaves.
This resilience is crucial, especially for production-related systems, as data is continuously generated and processed in the company's digitally controlled manufacturing. “Our quality assurance, for example, relies on all relevant information from production being stored without gaps. With Nutanix Files Storage, we ensure that the corresponding services remain available even during maintenance work,” says Reaves.
The Nutanix Data Lens solution also helps protect sensitive company data from unauthorized access. With this security and analysis solution, the IT team at DÜRR DENTAL can identify unusual activities—for example, in the context of ransomware attacks—at an early stage and initiate appropriate countermeasures.
In one specific case, for example, the solution reported an unusually high number of file retrievals within a short time and then automatically limited access. “Even if the incident ultimately turned out to be harmless, it is reassuring to know that Nutanix Data Lens detects potentially critical situations immediately,” says Reaves.
Flexible provision of new services and resources
DÜRR DENTAL has also gained agility with the Nutanix platform and can provide infrastructure resources very quickly as needed. “With Nutanix, we achieve the flexibility of a cloud environment without sacrificing control over our applications and data,” emphasizes Wolfgang Zehner.
Compared to the previous 3-tier architecture, the effort for expansions in particular has been significantly reduced. To increase the performance of the platform, additional nodes are simply added to the platform. “In the past, every scaling project required significant planning and coordination, and we were actually always busy for several weeks,” recalls Matthias Reaves. “Today, we can complete expansions in a very short time. The operational effort for us has decreased by at least 70 percent as a result.”
The agility gained is also evident in the implementation of new application scenarios. For example, DÜRR DENTAL has virtualized the majority of its design workstations with the support of IF-Tech. CAD applications such as SOLIDWORKS now also run on the Nutanix platform—accelerated by integrated NVIDIA GPUs. The virtual desktops for the designers thus achieve graphics performance levels that are comparable to local high-end workstations.
Looking to the future
As an innovation-driven company, DÜRR DENTAL wants to continue to expand its use of the Nutanix platform. The IT team therefore exchanges information once a month with the Nutanix specialists from IF-Tech about the latest features and extensions.
“Since we have been using Nutanix, the platform has developed enormously—and there are always new features that are interesting for us,” says Matthias Reaves. “One option we are considering is the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform. In the future, we could also operate containerized applications directly via our existing infrastructure and manage them centrally.”
IF-Tech AG delivers future-ready IT solutions for today and tomorrow. Sophisticated IT infrastructures, individual concepts, and NextGen Modern Workplaces: The IF-Tech team supports customers in the German-speaking region from the upper mid-market and enterprise segments, from strategic consulting and implementation to ongoing operations and managed services. IF-Tech is characterized by in-depth, manufacturer-level expertise and support from direct points of contact.
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