Modernizing IT to Capture New Business Opportunities
Fuchs+Partner laid the foundations for further business expansion with a hyperconverged solution based on Scale Computing HyperCore and Lenovo ThinkSystem servers.
Customer Overview
Fuchs+Partner is a construction company, property developer, and landlord based in Kleinmachnow, near Berlin in Germany. To date, Fuchs+Partner has built 760 houses and flats for sale and rent mainly across the Berlin-Brandenburg region. With a mission to provide an stress-free experience, the company focuses on quality living spaces and premium customer service.
Challenges
In recent years, Fuchs+Partner has expanded rapidly. Digital processes are key to managing the growing volume of work efficiently.
“We are expanding into new business areas, including maintenance and facility management, while also taking on larger multi-story construction projects,” says Florian Fuchs, CEO at Fuchs+Partner. “We gained our 90 newest customers about three times faster than the previous 90 customers, which put the company under pressure to boost efficiency. Delivering high-quality services for up to 60 flats per apartment building requires sophisticated management processes. It’s crucial that we can drive these processes effectively without sending our operational costs soaring—and our digital systems are a key enabler of that goal.”
The company’s fragmented server landscape no longer provided the level of performance to support the growing business. Systems sourced from multiple vendors, some without active support contracts, posed a risk. Furthermore, Fuchs+Partner recognized that a low level of virtualization and automation was limiting its digital transformation ambitions. And without flexible and fast disaster recovery capabilities, a hardware failure could harm productivity, requiring slow and costly fixes.
Partnership for flexibility, automation, and cost-efficiency
Fuchs+Partner found an innovative partnership with Scale Computing, Lenovo, and its value-added partner pk systems GmbH to consolidate its fragmented IT and digitize its business processes. pk systems is an IT consulting and services company based in Berlin, Germany. As a medium-sized business, pk systems knows from experience what customers need and uses its expertise to plan, deploy, and operate solid and future-proof IT solutions for its customers.
Working together with Lenovo and Scale Computing, pk systems harmonized and simplified the IT at Fuchs+Partner by deploying a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) based on Scale Computing HyperCore running on Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 servers. “We quickly saw the benefits of HCI,” says Florian Fuchs. “This approach allows us to run all mission-critical workloads on a single, easy-to-manage, extensible platform.”
SC//HyperCore is a complete, multi-node cluster solution for operating high-availability IT services including virtualization, rapid disaster recovery, and flexible backup capabilities. The platform supports fault-tolerant operations with automated failover processes across cluster nodes to maximize availability without manual administration overhead.
Fuchs+Partner relies on pk systems, Lenovo, and Scale Computing to run all mission-critical IT services, including Microsoft Windows Server systems for file storage and communications as well as virtual desktops using Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop Services.
Today, Fuchs+Partner benefits from a highly reliable HCI without any hidden costs. “The Lenovo servers with SC//HyperCore are all managed by pk systems, which is the perfect solution for us,” confirms Florian Fuchs. “We get server, storage, networking, and virtualization from a single partner, streamlining operations and support. The platform provides enterprise-grade performance and reliability at an accessible price-point, ideally suited for a small company like us.”
Results
To focus on running its business, Fuchs+Partner engaged pk systems to provide a full-service solution including operations, maintenance, and support. Thanks to the low administration and systems management overhead of the Lenovo servers with SC//HyperCore, pk systems offers Fuchs+Partner an attractive flat-fee model.
“By deploying the Lenovo and Scale Computing solution together with pk systems, we substantially reduced the risk of outages,” states Florian Fuchs. “The built-in hot-spare capability allows us to replace components during production operations. Using the snapshot feature, we can recover rapidly, and roll back applications and virtual servers after upgrades within seconds, should we experience any issues.”
By leveraging the Lenovo and Scale Computing solution to run virtual desktops for its staff, Fuchs+Partner makes the work-from-home experience seamless for employees. When employees shifted to remote work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the business continued with little interruption. “In the past, I felt that working from home always needed too much adjustment to a different desktop setup and configuration,” says Florian Fuchs. “With virtual desktops, I have the same environment everywhere, ensuring a productive and seamless experience whether I am in the office, in our exhibition homes, or in the home office.”
He concludes, “Thanks to pk systems, Lenovo, and Scale Computing, we have successfully consolidated our IT environment. We now run our mission-critical systems on a modular, flexible, scalable, future-ready, and energy-efficient platform. With pk systems taking care of operations, we can focus on our core competencies, taking advantage of new business opportunities and driving digital innovation.”