Maximum availability, flexibility, high computing power. These are the requirements for compliant cloud services. Multinational company Lenovo has chosen a provider from Slovakia. From that cloud environment they provide internal IT systems for the EMEA region.
Lenovo Slovakia is the official representation of the corporation in Slovakia, provides internal IT systems and services for the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa), uses servers in GAMO Cloud. We interviewed Branislav Kartik, the manager for this segment.
What is your view on the current development and direction of technology?
I also think that cloud solutions have a future. It’s a natural approach to both programming and using applications. However, artificial intelligence, IoT, intelligent applications, analytics, virtual reality or biometric functions will also continue to develop and need central storage and need to be managed.
Which infrastructure do you prefer? Traditional, cloud, hybrid?
To each what he needs at the moment. Practically, however, it turns out that cloud solutions make more sense. Especially for companies whose business is not IT or only to a small extent. In this case, they shouldn’t try to manage the infrastructure themselves, because it’s more expensive than they think. Because they often don’t keep track of the so-called ‘invisible costs’, which is the amount for electricity, for cooling the server room, for example. And, of course, there are other costs, especially for human resources.
For companies that do IT, traditional infrastructure and an in-house lab make sense. At Lenovo, we also try new things on our own hardware, but we try to put most of our services in cloud storage. It’s more convenient for us.
Where do you see the advantages?
In simplifying systems administration. The user does not have to deal with the infrastructure itself, he pays for the service. Let me give a simple example: own car versus taxi. If I don’t have a car, I don’t need to take care of it, pay for insurance, repairs, or the current increasingly expensive fuel. If I need a ride somewhere, I’ll call a cab, just the service itself. It’s admittedly impractical when going on holiday, but for many transfers it’s the solution. So another positive is the money saved. Even over the horizon of 3, 4, 5 years of a cloud solution, not just temporarily. Other times there are cases when, for example, we currently need storage, but investing the initial 5,000 Euros in hardware, without knowing whether it will be sufficient or unnecessarily large, is money risky invested.
You manage internal IT systems and services for the Lenovo brand across the EMEA region. What does this involve?
It’s managing IT operations in an area from Dublin to Moscow, Dubai to Johannesburg, wherever Lenovo has a presence. There’s a representative office in about every European country. Mostly it’s sales, logistics and service management. IT network management is managed from China. My team is in charge of end user contact within Lenovo.
Lenovo’s know-how has historically been acquired by investing in large hardware and technology development labs. It has a complete infrastructure solutions division, we see it as a global hardware giant. So what brought you to the cloud?
We started dealing with cloud solutions back in 2011. At that time, there were a number of small so-called ‘marching band’ servers. People from different departments, such as reporting, had additional application or database servers. These were in various locations – in the corridor, on desks in offices, at best in some server room, with no proper central administration and security controls. One day it happened that such a server stopped working due to the critical amount of dust it managed to suck in. At that time, we didn’t even have a cloud rolled out in the regions and simply had to start with an external partner.
Why did you decide to trust a Slovak cloud service provider instead of a big global player? What were the main reasons and advantages?
More than localpatriotism, it pleases a person to work with a local partner. One of the requirements was physical proximity due to network latency. The size of the provider did not play a role for us, rather it was security and quality of service. We don’t even care about the exact processor frequency, memory, but we need to know how it behaves and what it does. And most importantly, when there is a problem, how the partner side responds is absolutely key. Another advantage is the possibilities of consulting and consulting services. I mean, keeping your own IT network expert is expensive. We prefer to pay him for a few hours a month on top of other services and we have always had a good experience with GAMO in this regard. We have always experienced a quick response and solution. And although we all speak English in the company, I also see an advantage in communicating in our native Slovak language.
Some companies are concerned about migration. Is it a relevant bogeyman in the process?
It is said that one should always have a plan so that one knows how to go beyond it. (Laughter.) First, it was necessary to do a network VPN tunnel into the interior of the company, which is always a security challenge. With his security, it’s the opposite of human rights. Only what is explicitly allowed is allowed, everything else is forbidden. Consequently, we chose the least complicated services where we could imagine a momentary outage. We went into the transition with the expectation that the entire application solutions that would go to re-implementation would be made anew. We’re not going to migrate old stuff with the old operating system. So there may be more of those scenarios, but there has to be a plan to come back from the halfway point if the migration doesn’t go as expected.
If you were to advise other IT managers and top executives in companies, what would be your recommendations for moving to the cloud?
The cloud system makes it a wonderful tool for a Try and Buy trading approach. You can’t return hardware bought for 5000 Euros in two months. With the cloud you can start with something smaller, unpretentious, not risk losing business continuity, wasted investments and so try it to see if it works. If it doesn’t work, just leave it at that. The mistake would rather be not to try it. And trying it doesn’t cost much. Sometimes even nothing. With a good partner, you can always agree to a trial run, a test. Investing efficiently is a necessity in business, and the cloud comes out as a financial advantage. But also as a necessity and the right direction technologically.
Today the cloud is a necessity, we recently had the aforementioned corridor servers, where are we going to move and how fast will it happen?
Despite all the talk about how everything is going fast and how everything is changing fast, it doesn’t seem to be that fast. I recently looked at a strategy from 10 to 12 years ago, and it talked about similar things to today. And we still haven’t arrived at that goal. My reasoning is that change is not happening that fast. But we are gradually moving on, and people will find better and more profitable solutions. And the more efficient ones will displace those who have not adapted to the inevitable changes of today.
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