Kattenberg Verhuizingen has their business in order. From the middle of the country they serve their clients locally, regionally, (inter)nationally and intercontinentally with all their relocation matters. However, the work can run so smoothly, but the IT infrastructure must also be in order. Wim Verdouw, deputy at Kattenberg Verhuizingen B.V., says: “Last year we discovered in a rather unexpected way, that it was time to start thinking about a new way of data storage…”.
It was time for a new way of data storage
Broken server, now what?
At the beginning of 2019 there was a moment of panic. “Our old server, which had actually served us faithfully for years, suddenly stopped working,” Wim says. “We had to restore a backup of one week old. That was of course a major setback. All employees had to check their calendar and all customers had to be called back. Not exactly a pleasant job. How could we ensure that this would not happen again in the future? And how were we going to solve the problem we were facing at that moment?”
Moving the mover to the cloud!
Wim knew things had to be done differently. “A while ago, I got in touch with yellow arrow. I thought that was the moment to present my problem to them. And I was right. They told me that I could continue as I did, but that nowadays there are other possibilities to set up your IT environment, where both security and reliability increase enormously. It turned out to be smarter to incorporate the services running on our server into Microsoft Cloud solutions. That was actually a bit scary. How does something like that work?”
Cloud-water fear
In the beginning, Wim saw dark clouds floating above the new cloud solution. “At Kattenberg we had no experience with the cloud at a company level. How do you make sure that all employees get on board in the event of such a drastic change? yellow arrow assured me right from the start that they would pay extensive attention to the adoption of the cloud, so that we would all understand what the added value was and what the possibilities were”.
CRM in the cloud
“With yellow arrow’s Workspace 365 solution, we wanted to be able to use our workspace fully from a web browser,” says Wim, “but it soon became clear that our CRM system faced some challenges. In principle, that system couldn’t be hosted in a cloud environment. However, this didn’t affect yellow arrow. They created a virtual desktop environment in the cloud, which made it possible to integrate this application. This way, we could simply access our CRM via a web application. Convenient, flexible and exactly as we were used to, but no longer on an unreliable server”.
Maintenance and safety
A server needs to be reviewed periodically. Wim explains: “In the past, I was always busy maintaining our server. Every week I checked everything and twice a year a specialist came by for major maintenance. It worked, but it was also a costly and labour-intensive process. Since yellow arrow took us to the cloud, this is all in the past. Maintenance is no longer necessary and what needs to be done can be done remotely. I had to overcome a hurdle to outsource the security, but now it is better than ever. I have nothing to worry about and everything is working better than it has ever done”.
Adapt and implementation
After all the preparations, team Kattenberg could get to work with the brand new workspace. “yellow arrow organised an instruction day with workshops,” says Wim. “An employee dived into the subject together with all my colleagues and explained how everything worked. This guidance really made a difference and ensured that we can now work efficiently and with a lot of pleasure”.