Veho is an automotive company with Finnish roots operating both on the home market as well as in Sweden and all the Baltic countries. The company was founded already in 1939 to represent the Mercedes-Benz brand on the Finnish market. The Mercedes-Benz brand was and still is the main focus of Veho.
Veho Baltics includes Veho Eesti, Veho Lietuva UAB and Veho SIA in Latvia. In total, there are more than 300 employees in the Baltic countries.
In 2019 when Veho Baltics OÜ was founded, the new company faced the challenge of uniting different companies, having to deal with the depreciated infrastructure and business information technology solutions that needed updating. To make it possible for the company to focus on the core business, the IT ecosystem required revision.
It was clear from the very start that an external partner was required, as the development need was extensive and had to span all the three countries. It was also clear that undertaking such a project internally would have been costly and time-consuming.
The decisive factors in choosing the suitable partner were the speed of service provision, existence of the required know-how and hands-on attitude. Physical presence of the partner in all three Baltic countries was also important to facilitate smooth processes, regardless of the travelling possibilities between the countries impacted by the COVID restrictions.
The first step in the cooperation was a comprehensive audit of Veho SIA: it included mapping of all the hardware and software used in the company and interviews with all the employees to find out the most critical sore points for the users. All the network equipment, security settings, age of the equipment and connections were also checked, as well as server hardware, platforms, operation systems and links. After the IT audit, a report was issued where the tasks were prioritized, starting from the most mission-critical ones. The report identified that the server park of the company was in the most vulnerable state, as the equipment and operation systems were old.
As the client decided not to invest into a new server park, the solution was to move everything to cloud environment: to the Primend Cloud platform. To disturb the operations of the client as little as possible, all the machines were transferred one by one, starting from the most important ones running business-critical software Automaster.
While moving the servers, also Microsoft 365 settings were reviewed. For employees, MFA and Endpoint Manager were installed to ensure a secure daily working environment. 56 network devices were installed, while the exchange of WiFi and switches is still pending, as the delivery times have been longer in the past year.
The part of the project involving the transfer of servers into the cloud took 2.5 to 3 months, turning out to be faster than expected. Another positive surprise was that work in the cloud was faster, and the reports that the local servers used to deliver in several minutes were created in a moment.
Siim Susi (Head of IT Baltics): I am glad to admit that there are partners in Estonia who can operate in such a responsive manner in the current volatile business environment, and can provide a high-quality outcome in a short time-frame. It is also extremely positive to see the open and transparent communication of Primend in problematic situations where they look for suitable solutions with the client.
Primend is very glad to see how new solutions make the daily work of a client clearly faster and more secure. We are passionate at what we do, namely to help our clients and partners work with equal passion, without having to focus on or be caught up in various IT-related problems.