Established supply chain software company Areté has chosen the IONOS Cloud to help it offer customers a hosted solution.
Hold a bottle of soda, and you’re looking at the result of a logistics challenge that brought together ingredients, bottles, labels, and caps at scale. Areté creates supply chain software that helps companies, including bottling companies, to forecast demand so they can ensure they have the right materials at the right time. Areté’s customers were responsible for hosting the software, but many of them didn’t want to manage physical servers anymore. Areté saw an opportunity to launch its software as a service, hosted on the IONOS Cloud. Cloud Cubes are helping Areté to fine-tune its server specifications prior to launch.
Learnings
- IONOS Data Center Designer makes it easy to configure a virtual data center with a drag-and-drop interface.
- Moving to the cloud increases resilience. Areté will be able to spin up new servers immediately in the event of any failure and can access the servers from anywhere there is internet access.
- Using IONOS Cloud Cubes, it’s possible to test a wide range of server configurations to fine-tune the specifications, ensuring the performance required while optimizing costs.
The Challenge
Giving customers flexibility with the cloud
For Areté (established 1984), the cloud offers an opportunity to make life easier for its customers. The company provides supply chain planning software. Bottling companies, for example, use it to schedule deliveries of ingredients, bottles, labels, and caps, so that they can optimize their production. Areté aims to offer superior customer service. “We like to work closely with the customer,” says Lee Wade, Senior Technology Manager, Areté. “Even if customers want something we don’t yet offer, like a particular report or a small feature, we will work with them to get that functionality into our tool if possible. I think that differentiates us.”
The Solution
Flexible testing environment
Areté used IONOS Cloud Cubes to create a test environment that would help it develop its cloud solution. IONOS Cloud Cubes are virtual machine development servers, which scale to enterprise cloud level. They are fully integrated with the IONOS network infrastructure and are charged by the minute on a pay-as-you-go contract. “We’re testing our tool in the IONOS environment and working out what our maximum and minimum specs could be,” says Wade. “That enables us to plan what resources we’ll need for customers when we start moving them to the cloud.” “The testing has been straightforward,” he adds. “I love IONOS’s flexibility in being able to pull up a Cube, use it for a few minutes, and tear it down. We don’t need to make a big investment in specs that we might not use. For instance, if we used a smaller Cube for testing and then realized it’s not going to work, we’re not stuck into a specific contract timeframe. We can just take it down and not worry about it.”
Faster infrastructure
Areté has been impressed with the speed of the infrastructure. “We’ve found that some of our processes run a little bit quicker in the cloud,” says Wade. “Even though the server might be of a lower spec than I have in my data center, the IONOS resources seem to run faster and smoother.”
Improved resilience
By moving to the cloud, Areté will be able to improve its resilience and better manage its maintenance costs. “Our on-premise servers are running fine now, but if there’s any kind of failure, then replacing a server can cost up to $8,000,” says Wade. “If we’re in the cloud, we can just spin up another server without any real downtime.” He adds: “If, for some reason, the internet connectivity to the office goes down, then we have no access to our production servers. We can’t support customers outside or do work inside. If our entire footprint was in the cloud and the internet went down, I could tell everybody to go home until the internet’s fixed or run to the nearest café where they could connect and work without any issues.”
The implementation
Choosing the right provider
To select the right cloud provider, Areté met with and got quotes from a number of cloud service providers, based on what they thought their requirements would be. “We looked at everything, including costs, the location of the data centers, and their uptime and reliability,” says Wade. “We have customers all over the world and we don’t want customers to have any lag because they’re too far from a data center,” says Wade. “IONOS offers the geographic spread our customers will need.”
Customer service counts
One thing that set IONOS apart was the quality of customer service. “The team has been super friendly, willing to work with us and available to answer all our questions,” says Wade. “They have the right attitude and are super knowledgeable.” As an example, the team showed Areté how to install a firewall on one of the Cubes. “Having solutions to the questions I had was definitely appreciated,” says Wade. Some of the questions that Areté had were more technical and went to the IONOS support team. “They got back to us quickly,” says Wade. “It was definitely a good experience.” Wade appreciates that his account team is based in the same time zone. “It makes it easy to ask a quick question,” he says. “I’m pretty comfortable that I’m going to get an answer within my workday.”
Drag-and-drop design
To help Areté select the right infrastructure, IONOS has offered free trials of services. “IONOS stepped up from the beginning. They said: ‘You guys need a free trial? You need to see what it’s like to build your environment and do some testing. Absolutely, we can give you a free trial for that. Most of the other vendors didn’t mention it.
Conclusion
Areté recommends IONOS
“I would highly recommend IONOS to anyone looking for a cloud environment,” says Wade. “The Data Center Designer is easy to use. The team is helpful, courteous, friendly, and able to solve any issues we’ve had so far.” Areté plans to launch its software on the IONOS Cloud once the testing confirms the specifications required. “The goal is to move our on-premise servers into the cloud, and to help our customers to save money on their physical servers and capital expenditures. They can rely on IONOS as the place to run their software.”
Copyright
This success story has been created with great care. However, we cannot guarantee the correctness, completeness or relevance of its contents. © Copyright IONOS Inc., 2024 All rights reserved, including those relating to the reproduction, editing, distribution and exploitation of the contents of this document — or parts thereof — beyond the scope of copyright law. Any such actions may only be carried out with the written consent of IONOS. IONOS reserves the right to update and change the contents of this white paper.
