Okam is a long-standing partner of Infomaniak. The company provides SMEs with its expertise and managed services covering the entire IT spectrum. To develop its customers’ infrastructures, it uses the Infomaniak Public Cloud for companies with between 5 and 500 employees. The competitiveness of the Infomaniak public cloud allows Okam to implement tried-and-tested, sustainable architectures with a price/performance ratio that is unrivalled on the market.

This is the first time that we can offer a 100% Swiss cloud package that is more competitive than actually buying the equipment. The customers can take advantage of the service instantly, with no immediate costs linked to the purchase of servers. Alexandre Molliex, Senior IT Consultant at Okam

Okam: IT partner of corporate technological transformation

The Okam team prepares companies for future challenges, such as DSI as a service. It brings together several types of expertise: consulting, digital transformation, management and support. Its technological universe is agnostic: Microsoft Azure & 365, Veem, Citrix, Cisco, Dell EMC, VMware, Igel, Google and Infomaniak Public Cloud. This wide range of options makes it possible to develop systems adapted to the customers in terms of:

  • infrastructure
  • security
  • mobility
  • digitisation of business processes

The challenge

To meet the needs of SMEs, Okam must reconcile 3 constraints:

  • provide a genuinely independent IaaS located in Switzerland for virtual machines and/or backup
  • provide the best price/performance ratio on the market
  • make the purchase of equipment less relevant and less competitive

In terms of IT infrastructure and data, Swiss companies are now keen to return to, or remain with, a local operator. They want to regain control of costs. With a proprietary solution or the purchase of in-house equipment, these costs can quickly soar – transparently or otherwise.

Why Infomaniak Public Cloud?

The guarantees of a sovereign infrastructure

The team responsible for managing the Infomaniak Public Cloud has mastered OpenStack for over 10 years and contributes directly to the open source project. Certain members of the team have already been responsible for an OpenStack infrastructure at the CERN, which is very reassuring.

For agnostic professionals like Okam, a “swiss made” Public Cloud provides a direct response to the problem of digital sovereignty experienced by our customers. This guarantee is eagerly sought after, be it with regard to customer sensitivities or aspects of certain regulations, such as those of the FINMA in the banking sector.

The competitiveness of the Infomaniak Public Cloud fills a void

The Infomaniak Public Cloud is a very timely development in terms of localisation, costs and performances compared to Azure or Google servers. The global approach adopted by Infomaniak (contractual, relational and architecture-related) is much more reassuring than with the plethora of small local hosts offering VMware in a rack or in the office. With regard to both size and hardware architecture (redundancy and reliability), it is also clear that this is the right approach. Infomaniak brings together a highly experienced team and has already reached a considerable size. This can be seen in this Cocadmin video (in French).

The Infomaniak Public Cloud is much more advantageous than buying servers.

The Infomaniak Public Cloud is so competitive that it offers a better price/performance ratio than an in-house server and involves no immediate costs. This product has altered the competitive landscape of the Public Cloud market. It is one of the keys to the success of this offer and it is for this reason in particular that we use it.

Local SMEs are still often accompanied by small-scale operators with teams of two or three people with a business model and corporate culture essentially based on the sale of machines. These companies were systematically faced with the choice of accepting a risk of service disruption or paying for the high level of availability at exorbitant prices.

In the past, an SME could ensure a high level of availability of its services by means of an Amazon virtual server that cost 3 times more than a local server  or make do with a physical server while accepting 2 to 3 days of stoppage per year. It was therefore possible to save several tens of thousands of CHF by pushing customers to buy equipment in-house. In light of these savings, certain customers preferred to take the risk of suffering service disruption.

A positive choice for the environment

Opting for the Infomaniak Public Cloud represents a two-fold advantage for the environment:

  • first, the customers use a cloud infrastructure recognised for its energy efficiency (for example one of the lowest PUE worldwide, 100% renewable energy and 200% of residual CO2 emissions offset);
  • second, this avoids having to purchase new servers for individual use. The production of new servers is responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the data hosting chain.

Combining these two factors makes the Infomaniak Public Cloud the most environmentally-friendly choice.

How is the Infomaniak Public Cloud implemented?

The solution enables us to meet customers’ technological and budgetary needs. Generally speaking, we have migrated several customers to the Public Cloud which were previously hosted on local servers or by small-scale hosts. Each solution benefits from centralised monitoring (RMM) by Okam.

We had been waiting for Infomaniak to provide its own IaaS offer. We seized the opportunity as soon as the beta version of the Public Cloud was rolled out. As with all solutions, we need a certain amount of assistance (which works very well) and a great deal of documentation.

What applications do you intend to offer your customers?

We apply the tools and methodologies used for key accounts to SMEs.

The Infomaniak Public Cloud initially enables us to complement our cloud services offer:

  • IaaS (infrastructure as a service)
  • DRaaS (disaster recovery as a service)
  • Backup outsourced
  • VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure)

The solution enables us to develop our Windows/Linux server hosting offer for SMEs. For example with:

  • hosting of M-Files, ActiveDirectory, ERP, Exchange and VDI servers
  • outsourcing of Veeam backup via the object storage

Which aspects do you particularly appreciate with Infomaniak?

For many years, we opted for Infomaniak with web-oriented services and were very satisfied. The partners programme is advantageous and enables us to manage all our customers via a single console. Exclusive localisation in Switzerland is also a key point. With its commitment to data privacy and its open source approach, Infomaniak really stands out on the market.

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