Business challenge
Hoping to expand to new industries and geographies to drive business growth, any.cloud sought a strategic partner to host its business continuity services in a trusted cloud environment.
Transformation
With IBM Cloud, any.cloud increased revenue by launching new solutions and delivering services to customers in a wide range of industries in more than 30 countries around the world.
Results
Added new customers
by expanding to a wide range of industries in more than 30 countriesIncreased revenue
by freeing staff to focus on innovation and building new servicesGained flexibility
to easily scale up or down based on customer requirementsBusiness challenge story
The search for a trusted cloud provider
For a decade, any.cloud offered hosting provider services on its own infrastructure at company headquarters in Denmark. Specializing in business continuity and security, its highly skilled team developed software, maintained all hardware and managed system availability. But, over time, it became clear that a move to a cloud service provider was essential to business growth.
To expand to an international market, any.cloud needed to deliver services from multiple points of presence. “For example, if you are a Brazilian company, you wouldn’t want to back up to a Danish infrastructure,” explains Benjamin Falk Elveng, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of any.cloud. “It would take too long with too much latency. So it was very important for us to deliver a local solution.”
After researching cloud providers, any.cloud chose IBM. Although any.cloud’s management found public clouds easy to use, they did not meet any.cloud standards for security and data placement. Additionally, public clouds were not able to deliver the performance guarantees and on-demand scalability any.cloud needed to serve its customers. The company also needed to maintain its commitment to quality by continuing to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3402-II and Service Organization Control 2 (SOC 2) standards.
“When I founded a hosting business, one of my main objectives was to sleep tight at night,” says Gregor Frimodt-MØller, Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of any.cloud. “Preventing data loss and breaches was critical to keeping me from turning into a nervous wreck. We value our client relationships, and more than 20 percent of our customers have been with us for more than a decade. Moving to a cloud service provider meant losing control and placing our trust outside of our own company. We put a lot of thought into how we were going to deliver our services and who would be the best partner for us, which is why we chose IBM Cloud.”
“ I have a personal passion for keeping any.cloud at the highest standards for quality and client satisfaction, which is why we partnered with IBM. ”
— Gregor Frimodt-MØller, Group CEO, any.cloud
Transformation story
Freedom to focus on innovation and growth
With the IBM partnership in place, any.cloud successfully transitioned from maintaining its own infrastructure to offering its services on IBM Cloud. Today, any.cloud delivers entire environments for backup, disaster recovery and applications from 60 IBM Cloud data centers around the world.
Moving to IBM Cloud gave any.cloud the freedom to focus on innovation, customer satisfaction and business growth. “With IBM Cloud, it’s very easy for us to expand,” notes Elveng. “We don’t have to do all the manual work anymore. We don’t have to consider uptime, availability and how to build infrastructure. IBM delivers all of it. We can focus on our customers, on our expertise and what we do best, which are the services we deliver through IBM Cloud.”
The company uses IBM Cloud bare metal servers to support business continuity and IBM Cloud Object Storage technology as its unstructured data storage service. In May 2019, any.cloud launched ReTrust, a new identity and detection intelligence service based on IBM Trusteer Rapport® technology. ReTrust expands the Trusteer platform beyond the banking industry, so other types of businesses can secure their online assets and customers. This solution is so innovative that IBM recognized any.cloud with the 2019 IBM Technology Service Provider of the Year Award.
“ IBM Cloud provides so many flexible ways for us to offer and deliver services. We can very efficiently build the right solution and make it available to customers around the world within a couple of hours. ”
— Benjamin Falk Elveng, CTO, any.cloud
Results story
IBM Cloud enables business expansion
Today, any.cloud has grown to serve customers in more than 30 countries. IBM Cloud has empowered any.cloud to expand to a wide range of industries including legal, distribution, pharmaceutical and banking organizations located in Denmark and internationally. In addition to providing cloud backup for IT infrastructure, any.cloud offers cloud-to-cloud backup for customers looking to protect data stored on another vendor’s cloud.
“Every company needs a good business continuity partner,” explains Frimodt-MØller. “Every company needs a strong, reliable backup partner and some also need the applications we offer. With IBM Cloud, we can serve a broad international market and deliver high availability and fast implementation.”
To meet performance guarantees and customer needs, any.cloud can readily scale systems up or down on demand. “In the business continuity field, clients need to grow and shrink the solution all the time,” adds Frimodt-MØller. “For example, a disaster case might need us to turn on some host machines, help with the disaster, make sure the client is back up and running and close the services. IBM Cloud allows us to rent physical hardware and easily turn on and shut down servers. This is an important advantage because IBM competitors would probably lock us in for two, three, or even four years.”
Resilient, redundant and designed for high availability, the IBM Cloud network meets any.cloud’s high standards for local access, low latency and certified security. “Working with IBM has been really great, and their technical support team is always ready to help us,” concludes Frimodt-MØller. “At the end of the day, it’s all about trust, and I can sleep tight knowing that our clients’ data is safe on IBM Cloud.”
“ By moving our solutions to IBM Cloud, we are able to embrace the entire world and become a truly global business. From a business perspective, IBM Cloud has been a strategic partner by enabling us to become an international player. ”
— Gregor Frimodt-MØller, Group CEO, any.cloud
any.cloud
IBM Business Partner, any.cloud delivers professional ISO-certified cloud services and IT consulting to a wide range of clients. With three companies in Denmark, Poland and the Czech Republic, any.cloud serves over 500 customers in more than 30 countries. The company is focused on helping its customers work more efficiently and grow their businesses quickly and securely. Founded in 1998, any.cloud has 45 employees and more than 3,100 virtual machines.
Take the next step
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