Overview
The system house KOMSA, founded in 1992, is one of the largest German distributors and service providers for information and communication technology in the B2C and B2B business.
Branche
Telecommunications
Employees
1200+
Trading partners
20.000+
gridscale products in use
• Public Cloud
• Storage
• Managed Kubernetes
• Reseller-/White-Label-Lösung
The goal
The further development of the KOMSA cloud strategy and the establishment of a fully comprehensive cloud service offering with the help of a multi-client capable and cost-flexible reseller platform. The focus here is on maximum security, ease of use, and close support from the manufacturer in a spirit of partnership.
Challenges
Only a few vendors are really tailored to the business requirements of system houses. Here, it was necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff and examine the vendors not only in terms of technology, but also with regard to possible white label options, their partner models and promised support and service guarantees.
The solution
The gridscale Cloud – a fail-safe and 100% DSGVO compliant reseller solution. Setting up, configuring and scaling a server is a matter of just a few clicks. Ideal for system houses: The integrated partner panel allows convenient management of all customer relationships and control of the entire cloud business at the same time.
Key Results
Public cloud in your own corporate design
Maximum security and availability
Custom configurations
We already knew the old-fashioned way of doing things. We really liked the way gridscale ticks. The approach was completely different from what we had learned.
Thomas Heidbreder, Head of Cloud Sales & Services at KOMSA AG
Starting point and key objectives
For a value-added distributor like KOMSA, the requirements for an IT infrastructure are high. As part of the further development of its own cloud strategy, particularly with respect to its indirect business, the company was therefore looking for an alternative infrastructure partner with a multi-client-capable and cost-transparent reseller platform. The aspects of security and data protection also play an important role for the system houses served by KOMSA.
“In the past, we only used small cloud services like Office 365 for our customers,” explains Thomas Heidbreder, Head of Cloud Sales & Services, “but the question was always, how do we deal with our own data center capacities? That’s where we’re thinking, of course, how we can provide appropriate services.”
“Especially when it comes to configuration and management of individual clients, the Partner Panel is really great. Most of the hosting offers we make to system houses in terms of cloud are based on hosting at gridscale because we can always rely on the proximity and competence of the gridscale experts.“
– Thomas Heidbreder
Wanted: A flexible partner for customized cloud offerings
For the expansion of KOMSA’s cloud capacities, cooperation with an alternative cloud provider with a white label option is just the right thing to do. To best realize the market opportunities of such a cooperation, two selection criteria were particularly important for KOMSA: a solution-oriented flexibility to implement customized cloud infrastructures for customers and a partnership-based relationship to quickly realize and smoothly operate these solutions. “We want to be able to create individual solutions for our customers that are not standard and come off the shelf,” says Heidbreder.
Realization
For Thomas Heidbreder, contact with gridscale was a very positive experience right from the start, both in terms of personal contact and technological expertise. “We already knew the old-fashioned way of doing things,” he recalls. “That’s when we really liked how gridscale ticks. The approach was very different from what we had learned.”
Among the points that ultimately tipped the scales in favor of gridscale was, for example, gridscale’s use of deep-learning algorithms developed in-house to identify potential performance problems in advance and to address them proactively. “The promise of 100% resilience already impressed us.”
A special feature of gridscale for KOMSA was also the uncomplicated and cooperative approach. “The fast and solution-oriented communication with the developers of gridscale is still a key feature of the cooperation today,” emphasizes Heidbreder. “For us, this is one of the important benefits of this partnership.”
The gridscale Partner Panel: the simple and transparent reseller cloud
For many system houses, cloud solutions are still a new area. The simplicity and user-friendliness of the Partner Panel is therefore particularly important for Heidbreder: “With gridscale, we found a reseller solution that can be easily explained and demonstrated to the system houses.” Setting up, configuring and scaling a server is a matter of just a few clicks.
“The Partner Panel is certainly something that convinced us,” says Heidbreder. “It’s also something you can quickly introduce to a partner who just doesn’t come from the IT infrastructure business.” Other plus points of the gridscale platform are the clear display of resource consumption and the minute-by-minute billing of daily costs.
Another ideal feature for a distributor like KOMSA is the ability to add limits and approvals for different customers and price models through the use of configurable templates. “This is particularly important in a resale model,” explains Heidbreder, praising the customer-friendly implementation: “It’s very easy to manage, simply on the interface. That’s really good.”
Highly flexible and data secure cloud environment
gridscale provides KOMSA’s IT specialists with development flexibility and a performance-based cost structure that the data centers of most hyperscalers cannot offer. Traditional solutions such as VMware also proved to be relatively expensive and inflexible for many applications.
For this reason, part of KOMSA’s cloud strategy is to develop customer-specific solutions based on the gridscale infrastructure that are profitable for the system house and distributor. Particularly in the case of network configuration, it is advantageous for a higher-level distributor that various clients can be linked with the Partner Panel. This opens up additional opportunities for the service provider business.
Even after the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the topic of security is a frequently requested aspect for German system houses when choosing a cloud solution. KOMSA can easily meet these requirements with the gridscale cloud. The German certified high-security data centers with geo-redundant data storage reliably cover all necessary legal framework conditions.
Summary
Virtualized infrastructures are being used by more and more companies and system houses to circumvent the disadvantages of rigid on-premises solutions. For KOMSA, the partnership with gridscale is therefore a central component of a future-oriented reseller cloud strategy. Decisive arguments were the flexibility for customers and developers, the innovative multi-client capable partner panel, reliable fail-safety and the transparent cost structure. But just as important as the technological and financial issues is the close and open-minded partnership character of the cooperation between KOMSA and gridscale.
Download the Success Story
Our Success and Partner Stories are also available for free download in PDF format. You can find many more exciting stories in our story overview or as a convenient PDF to take home in the Download Center.