The Stepco Group consists of the Dutch subsidiaries Stepco & Stepco ICT Solutions, Stepco Belgium and the German Twinsec, acquired in 2017. Stepco provides services in the field of cybersecurity, cloud and workplace management and focuses on SME+ customers in the Euregio (Netherlands, Germany and Belgium). Before this, the IT provider, active under the motto 'Security driven IT', also had its own IT infrastructure. But when a five-year investment in new hardware came into play in 2019, the question arose as to how great the added value of having your own data center still was. There were plenty of reasons to choose outsourcing, says Stepco CEO Bob Serneels. “By outsourcing our data center, our technicians have the time they need to provide further added value to our customers, such as in the field of security. Capacity is another reason to outsource our data center platform. It takes a lot of time and money to continuously invest in sufficient capacity. Enough reasons to look for a partner who specializes in data centers and cloud, who could relieve us of this burden.”

Good combination
After a careful search, cloud service provider Uniserver turned out to meet this requirement, says Bob. In addition, it was a distinction that CloudNation Nowadays, just like Uniserver itself, it falls under the Uniserver Group. “We are an active hybrid cloud provider with a mix of public cloud – Azure – and our own cloud. Uniserver is a good partner for your own cloud solution, CloudNation is a good partner for Azure. So a good combination.”
“Based on Stepco's high demands, we made a proposal for taking over the platform including 24/7 management,” adds Uniservers Managing Director Yannick de Lange. “We included the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in this proposal to provide insight into all costs of Stepco's platform. This allowed a nice comparison to be made with the new situation and what benefits could be achieved here. Consider lower monthly costs, but also the time for IT staff to be freed up to focus on innovation.”

Knowledge
For Raymond Jeurninck, Technical Management & Data Centers Manager, Uniserver's thorough knowledge of the core networking aspect was a practical reason to choose them. “We no longer have to worry about everything from making connections, adding or removing routers, switches and firewalls. Previously, we had to employ several people for this. We can now use them elsewhere.” Bob supports this. “For us, core networking and cloud is one part of our work, a necessary foundation. For Uniserver it is their core business and you notice that. As a company we are making progress now that we can use many of the hours we have released elsewhere. We can now focus on providing added value to our customers. We will further expand this in the coming year, now that all migrations have been completed.”

Savings on TCO
However, outsourcing the platform provides Stepco with more benefits, as Yannick already described. The company now saves an amount of at least 10 percent on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) every year. Stepco's business model has changed from CAPEX to OPEX. Instead of making large investments in peak capacity, they now pay a monthly fee for a flexible IT platform.

During the takeover of the platform, Stepco also had undepreciated hardware. To easily transition to the new platform in one go, Uniserver has acquired this hardware including a premium. Stepco was able to use the financial resources that were released as a result for further innovation. “We have also bought out the other contracts that were still in progress with other IT suppliers,” Yannick outlines. “This gives Stepco the opportunity to start with a clean slate.”

Migration process
The most important part of the platform acquisition from Stepco to Uniserver was the aforementioned migration process, which took place in 2022. To guarantee that this process runs smoothly – without disruptions and downtime – a dedicated team has been put together: a team of specialists including our own Project Manager and Engineer. They took control during the migration and ensured that Stepco's (end) customers did not notice anything.

Such a migration usually takes one day. During this period, a number of legacy applications also had to be renewed at Stepco. When migrating to the cloud, the applications may become outdated. Uniserver also offers support here and the applications have now been integrated with the new platform.
“In the beginning of the collaboration, it was sometimes a struggle,” remembers Vincent de Bruijn, Project Manager from Stepco. “What could Uniserver do for us and what could we do ourselves in the migration process? It didn't help that it was during the period of corona, with growing global logistics problems in delivering hardware. But once we were able to really start up and had a good division of labor for the migrations – where we were of course responsible for communication with the customer – things went quickly.”

Communicate clearly
By communicating clearly and transparently in advance to Stepco customers, the actual migration was often a matter of hours, says Vincent. “They knew where they stood and the migrations went efficiently and quickly, even during the holiday period in the summer of 2022. Uniserver did take the lead in network migrations, because it had the most expertise in this area. That also went well thanks to thorough preparation. We have now had 14 migrations with more than 400 VMs, the last of which was completed at the end of October 2022.”
Vincent likes that interim adjustments were possible during the migration process. “For example, instead of transferring everything 1-to-1, we decided to switch to Fortinet firewalls. We already use this in a number of customer environments, so we thought it would be a good idea to harmonize this across the board. Then you will notice that Uniserver has a lot of experience in this and can therefore advise and implement such a change during the process. This way you don't have to go shopping to arrange things yourself and set up a separate process again.”

Platform in good hands
Uniserver now offers Stepco the certainty that their platform is in good hands, Yannick underlines. “We have one of the largest Dutch ICT infrastructures: more than 50.000 Virtual Machines (VMs) spread over four Dutch data centers. This also means that confidential company data does not cross borders. In addition, the infrastructure is fully redundant. If one server fails, another copy takes over without interruption. Stepco customers don't notice anything. The uptime has been 100 percent in recent years. This is partly possible thanks to the proven technology of Veeam, VMware and HPE, with which we as Uniserver have had good partnerships for years.”
In any case, Raymond notices that the advantage of upscaling and downscaling is immediately present. “Due to its size and more direct contacts, Uniserver naturally has a better position when it comes to deploying new equipment. But downscaling is also important. It regularly happens that we or our customers move from private to public cloud for parts of an IT environment. Then you should also be able to scale down without any problems. When you have your own equipment, that is more difficult. This is arranged neatly and without any problems via Uniserver.”

Looking forward
In any case, 2022 can be called a success for Bob, and he is already looking ahead. “The collaboration is excellent, as is the communication. The migrations were successful and customers did not notice anything, but they do benefit from benefits such as more speed and easier scaling up and down.” But, Bob emphasizes, an outsourcer has to prove itself every year, including Uniserver. “Let us be clear: we chose Uniserver because they offer us the most added value, we were not looking for the greatest cost savings. Consider the example of Fortinet firewalls. I assume that they will continue to prove that added value in the coming years. That is two-way traffic, by the way. We also have a responsibility. Uniserver can only respond properly to our changing wishes and needs if they know what is going on at Stepco or its customers.”