01 October 2017
Ceramics producer Villeroy & Boch was established in Germany in 1748. Over the last 269 years, the company has developed into a global lifestyle brand, according to its head of internet and e-business services, Dr. Pascal Rheinert. He says the two key business developments and issues the company has experienced are ‘internationalisation’ and ‘digitisation’.
For especially busy days such as Black Friday, short-term appropriation of additional resources was extremely important. However with its previous IT infrastructure, the company could only partially achieve this. Moreover in the past, the implementation of the firewall configuration had been delayed. The number of tasks to be completed and the delegation of responsibility between several groups meant this was a time-consuming process for Villeroy & Boch. As a result, it needed a new solution.
The search for a new hosting partner started in early 2014. Rheinert says what was needed was a partner that operated on a global scale, and provided cloud solutions certified to ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 1 and 2. Furthermore, the migration of the complete server landscape into a new IP range presented numerous challenges. Because it required a complete change of operating system, each server would have to be rebuilt. In addition, the new hosting partner needed to facilitate an open, supportive partnership, and establish
clear definitions of responsibilities.
Villeroy & Boch decided to choose IT infrastructure and cloud provider OVH. As well as its global presence, Rheinert says what also sealed the deal was OVH’s provision of new servers within a few hours, its CDN, and “great” support during the migration phase.
Beginning with the customer site, migration started at the end of 2014. Migration of the global online stores and the professional portals followed in May 2015, and finally, at the end of June 2015, the migration of the Chinese website was completed.
Villeroy & Boch uses OVH’s IaaS platform in terms of installation, maintenance and security of its IT infrastructure. But the solution has enabled the ceramics makers to completely manage the dedicated server cluster autonomously. Additionally, it is able enter all the necessary rights in VMware administration, as well as clone, upgrade, disable or delete servers.
Rheinert says the IT infrastructure adaptation is fast, flexible and inexpensive, making it possible for Villeroy & Boch to directly respond to changing customer requirements and market situations, such as seasonal peaks.
