The Szatmári Group, which is primarily known for its building engineering solutions, but which has also achieved success in the dairy, mill and automotive industries, uses a service-based model, thus keeping up with its ever-increasing IT needs without investment.
In recent years, Szatmári Kft., considered one of the most valuable family-owned Hungarian companies, which entered the market in 1990 with the distribution of gas appliances and building machinery fittings, has developed into a group of companies with a turnover of 66 billion forints and employing more than 500 people. The Szatmári group is now waiting for its customers in forty-one building engineering and bathroom specialist stores throughout the country, it has acquired interests in the dairy and automotive industries, and has emerged as one of the largest players in the domestic market in the mill industry.
The growth of the company group, which is on a steep upward trajectory, is accompanied by a series of technological and IT developments and innovations. The latest milestone in this field is the opening of their new automated warehouse, which was built with HUF 3.6 billion, this winter.
Model change at the time of greatest success
During the planning, construction and operation of the central infrastructure of the Szatmári group, you can count on a team consisting of a manufacturer (Hewlett Packard Enterprise and its predecessors), a distributor (Ingram Micro Hungary) and a reseller partner (Mind System Consulting) for 20 years. According to the two-decade practice, the Szatmári group every few years, when it became timely to develop the IT system, visited the well-known specialists of the team providing the IT infrastructure and, after joint planning, purchased the elements of the system that served the new needs of the company group. This practice changed in the spring of 2021, when the development needs were most recently scheduled.
The Szatmári Group, which is experiencing the most prosperous period in its history – its turnover has increased by 24 percent in the last two years – has been using its central infrastructure for two and a half years in the framework of the service-based HPE GreenLake, which matches real IT usage, so that it can simultaneously enjoy two worlds, the locally installed infrastructure and the benefits of cloud solutions.
“During the many years of our cooperation, we have become a familiar team with specialists from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ingram Micro and Mind System, so the technical elements of the offer for the new infrastructure received in 2021 fully met my ideas. After some calculations, the HPE GreenLake service-based construction I also found its terms and conditions to be suitable: the most attractive point of the offer was that we could develop our system without investment, and in addition, projected on a five-year technology life cycle, with terms even more favorable than the investment price,” underlined György Stomfai, the IT director of the Szatmári Group.
More resources for business
According to HPE GreenLake’s operating model, companies can subscribe to a service for three, four or five years without investment costs, which fulfills the task of the central infrastructure both on the first and – presumably the last day – of the service period, well-planned monthly expenses next to.
With the service-based model, companies can save capital and use their financial and human resources intended for IT investments in other ways that support their business activities. They can do all this by relying on a central infrastructure that reliably serves their current needs every day, is constantly maintained and regularly updated.
Actual consumption counts
When developing a solution tailored to the company, it is determined what and how much capacity the given organization needs in terms of data storage, server or network devices at the start of the contract period. The monthly fee for the service is calculated on the basis of the capacity established in this way, while infrastructure with a capacity 20-40% higher than this is installed at the company’s premises at no extra charge. The purpose of the reserve is to ensure that the system is able to perform its task to the maximum even during possible outage periods and is suitable to meet the excess capacity requirements arising during the contractual period. If the company is permanently approaching the limit of total capacity, the reserve can serve as a bridging solution for the period until the physical expansion of the infrastructure is realized.
Guarantees for today and the future
The Szatmári group signed a five-year HPE GreenLake contract and initiated the expansion of the infrastructure twice in the two and a half years since then. When such a need arises, the company’s IT department can feel safe in several ways. On the one hand, it cannot happen that you do not have access to expansion devices compatible with the infrastructure, because in the contract you receive a guarantee for the product supply until the end of the contract period, and on the other hand, you do not have to worry about the fluctuation of the prices of the products, since you can get the devices at a fixed price at the time of signing the contract. The latter is extremely important these days, when due to global problems in supply chains, the prices of components can change with a huge amplitude.
The cyclicality of HPE GreenLake contracts is a legacy of not allowing the infrastructure to become obsolete. According to general consensus, nowadays, on average, generational changes occur every 4-5 years, which companies must follow. When the contracts are renewed, this generational change is also carried out automatically, without investment.
“Another particularly attractive element of the HPE GreenLake service was that it freed me from the burden that I felt as a leader with a strong emphasis on sustainability during the generational change of our infrastructure. At the end of the HPE GreenLake contract cycles, HPE takes back the devices that are no longer needed in the next term and within the framework of its dedicated program ensures their sustainable use or destruction,” added György Stomfai.
Predictable operation, simple planning
The self-diagnostic function of the systems operating in the HPE GreenLake service makes operation simpler and smoother, among other things, by recognizing any errors that may arise even before they occur, automatically notifying the relevant authorities about them, and even making recommendations for their management. Thanks to the backup resources built into the system, companies do not experience outages even during troubleshooting, and defective parts are replaced on the basis of a high-level service.
It is important to mention here that according to the HPE GreenLake service contracts, HPE owns all hardware devices, but does not have any access to the stored data. Data is collected on system operation data, but these are automatically sent to the manufacturer only in a form that can be reviewed by the company. The collection point for this set of data is the HPE GreenLake Cloud Platform, which is accessed by the distributor, manufacturer and reseller. On the portal, it is possible to monitor the current and past utilization of the system’s capacities, providing information for the fine-tuning of the infrastructure as well as for long-term planning.
The benefits of two worlds in one solution
Without the HPE GreenLake service, which offers the security and speed of locally installed systems and is unique in this form on the market, the Szatmári group would not have been able to switch to the infrastructure providing the convenience of cloud services. For example, cloud service providers operating with considerable latency are simply not capable of providing the infrastructural service of their previously mentioned recent development, the automated warehouse.
Disadvantages of cloud services include remote data storage, more specifically, the fact that companies’ data assets are not “in plain sight” but within physical reach. HPE GreenLake offers a solution for this as a locally operating infrastructure. In the case of the Szatmári group, the legal environment does not require local data storage – unlike, for example, players in the financial sector, which have to comply with much stricter rules – but their IT department is still reassured that the security of their data is in their own hands.
It’s worth thinking about
The HPE GreenLake service is an ideal solution for the Szatmári group, which is in a phase of strong growth, but it can be recommended for all medium and large companies that prefer to devote resources to their core business rather than developing or even managing their IT infrastructure. The specialists of Ingram Micro Hungary provide a comprehensive demo opportunity and consulting, which is unique in our country, for all those who imagine the future of the central infrastructure as a service.
For more information, please visit https://ingramhorizon.com/hu/products/hu-greenlake-for-customers to the side!
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