Delfood

Philippe Colon is IT Manager at Delfood, a storage and logistics company that distributes food and non-food products under the Louis Delhaize brand. Quality, entrepreneurship, customer satisfaction: at Easi, we recognize ourselves in Delfood's values. A year after entrusting the migration of their infrastructure within Easi's cloud solution, Cloud2be, Philippe Colon explains the reasons that convinced him to work with the Belgian cloud solution.

"Delfood knows Easi since its creation and was a customer of Salvatore Curaba in a previous life. When his company moved to Nivelles, we started a collaboration on services related to software development. Over the years, we have followed the progression of Easi with interest."

To select the partner that would accompany us in a migration towards a new storage system and the protection of our data, we evaluated the following criteria for each of our partners:

• Technical skills
• Complementarity of IT activities
• Proximity

Before the transition to Cloud2be, Delfood was working in the cloud of IBM, an historical partner from Easi.

"Since 2010, we opted for an IAAS with IBM, while maintaining clean secondary systems. Our solution has naturally extended to a hybrid cloud solution. When IBM decided to put an end to the provided services, it seemed logical to us to turn to one of its partners for the IBM Power i platform. Cloud2be was one of the candidates for this transition.", continues Philippe Colon. 

"The needs of Delfood are not those of a multinational company, but they require some expertise in the services that accompany the adoption of a cloud solution. The experience gained in the early years of Cloud2be and the available services were decisive in our choice."

A smooth and challenging transition

A migration to a (new) cloud solution is prepared meticulously. For Cloud2be and Delfood, we had to deal with various technical challenges in particular. Leaving a cloud environment for another one is clearly a challenge.

"We have several dozens of systems in a multi-tiered architecture. Such a transition is not easily realized. And even when virtualization tools allow it to be purely technical, security rules can be an obstacle to a smooth transition."

For Delfood, there was no question of shutting down some front-end systems during the migration. There were, therefore, no service cuts during the removal of the systems, which required temporary resources and good expertise from the various providers to organize this transition.

"The back-end was transferred in less than 24 hours."

"The back-end was transferred in less than 24 hours. From a logistical point of view, this aspect was precious to us! In terms of management, the guarantee of synchronous replication also met the Delfood requirements in terms of business continuity plan."

Shared Management

"Our way of working has not changed fundamentally because we are in a logical pursuit of the orientations chosen before the use of Cloud2be. In terms of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) process, incident management is shared, as well as the events for the assets in Cloud2be. Delfood keeps control of its systems, while the technical stratum is entrusted to Easi. The presence of a portal for the administration of our virtualized systems allows sufficient autonomy. Our virtualized systems can be administered as soon as the operating system is configured. "

"Delfood keeps control of its systems, while the technical stratum is entrusted to Easi."

A relationship of Trust

"I recommend Easi as a partner for a transition to a cloud solution. The services, skills and experience of the team were impressive. In terms of practical expectations, I also felt listened. I did not have to look elsewhere for what was planned in terms of services provided by Easi. 

We have faced unexpected things, that is true. They were managed without too much difficulty or problems with availability of consultants. The change of a cloud partner can be stressful for an IT manager. However, as far as we are concerned, the environmental transition has been ensured without hindrance. This type of transition does not take place every six months, so it is essential to be able to rely on a long-term stable partner. This is essential to ensure the availability of systems."

The human factor

"How do we see the future of IT? It is a support activity, it is neither a showcase nor a museum, both flexible and stable, durable, available... I believe that the main factor of the IT sector's successful future is essentially human and the lack of resources in the IT trades is probably the main challenge for the coming years."