Service Provider
Swiss IT services provider Somnitec offers holistic, tailor-made solutions designed to meet both today’s and tomorrow’s business IT needs. Specializing in IT infrastructure outsourcing and cloud services, the company serves enterprises of all sizes—from small local businesses to large, international corporations. Rapid innovation is critical in the service provider marketspace, and the organization knew that it needed. Somnitec AG used Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series powered by Nutanix to build a private cloud platform in its Swiss data centers. The complete hyperconverged infrastructure solution delivers flexible, reliable cloud services that don’t compromise on security or performance.
The Lenovo ThinkAgile HX platform is the foundation for our ‘Made in Switzerland’ private and hybrid cloud services, giving clients the benefits of cloud computing without sacrificing data control, security, or performance.
Somnitec operates offices in Gerlafingen and Zurich, as well as two high-availability data centers in Switzerland, and employs 70 people. The firm understands that no enterprise—regardless of size, market share, reputation, or industry—can afford to stand still. All businesses must anticipate and adapt to constantly changing market conditions, regulatory requirements, and customer expectations.
“An agile, responsive business requires flexible, scalable IT,” says Paolo Donnarumma, Chief Sales Officer at Somnitec. “Cloud computing offers just that, and we are eager to help our clients reap the rewards.”
However, some of Somnitec’s clients had reservations about moving workloads to the public cloud. Many of them operated in heavily regulated industries, such as the banking and pharmaceuticals sectors, and were worried about data security and privacy. Others doubted that public cloud offered the performance they needed to support operations.
Somnitec needed a comprehensive, easy to manage solution that could enable it to deliver the services customers expect, while meeting performance and compliance expectations.
To bring the cloud experience to the data center, Somnitec deployed the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series, a best-in-class hyperconverged infrastructure solution with Nutanix software pre-loaded. This all-in-one solution lets Somnitec simplify data center management, free up IT staff, and accelerate deployment. The firm installed six Lenovo ThinkAgile HX3321 certified nodes, configured as two three-node clusters, as part of an initial “Buy & Try” trial.
After 40 days of rigorous testing, Somnitec’s IT team gave the Nutanix-Lenovo solution the green light, and the company began migrating client environments over to the new platform.
Today, Somnitec hosts multiple client environments, and has expanded its HCI-based offering with additional nodes to meet growing client demand.
“The Lenovo and Nutanix HCI solution brings clients a step closer to cloud computing,” said Jan Fischer, Team Lead of Infrastructure Services at Somnitec. “They get the flexibility and easy scalability of cloud services, but with the peace of mind that everything is hosted in our secure data centers.”
With the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX platform powered by Nutanix, Somnitec can offer clients agile, reliable, high-performance private and hybrid cloud services, as well as peace of mind that data stays in-country—and is therefore subject to strict Swiss national data protection laws.
“HCI gives us cloud-like functionality in our data centers,” says Donnarumma. “Moving from a three-tier architecture to the Nutanix-Lenovo solution has enabled us to simplify, modernize, and automate operational processes.”
By moving to HCI, Somnitec was able to break up existing silos, eliminating the need for dedicated server and storage expertise. The HCI-based cloud is managed by IT generalists, freeing up specialists’ time to focus on income-generating activities rather than routine infrastructure administration.
The solution lets IT utilize Nutanix Prism to take advantage of one-click planning, provisioning, insights, and firmware updates. Simplifying IT operations has reduced the time required to provision virtual machines by 70 percent, and reduced operating costs by 70 percent as well.
The solution also enables Somnitec to offer “Made in Switzerland” cloud services that comply with strict data protection regulations.
The Lenovo smarter infrastructure solutions, powered by Nutanix has empowered Somnitec AG to support its increasingly data-centered clients, driving new customer and revenue opportunities.
“Confidence in our private cloud offering is high, and more and more clients are now opting for cloud services to take boost the agility and responsiveness of their business,” said Mirco Blöchliger, Chief Delivery Officer at Somnitec AG.
With its scalable, flexible infrastructure in place, Somnitec AG has strengthened its ability to innovate faster and respond to changing client expectations well into the future.