Together with T-Systems, the federal company is now constructing a private cloud according to its individual needs. This version of the cloud not only fulfills requirements in terms of highly dynamic support for business processes, but also in terms of high level technical security and compliance. Future Cloud Infrastructure (FCI) is therefore the best option for the current customer situation – all the more so because it enables the continuation of the existing technology strategy. It facilitates the first steps into the world of the cloud and provides the opportunity to accelerate software development cycles, as well as introducing modern development platforms and methods. In this way, the customer can respond faster to its business demands. With T-Systems, the customer also has an experienced partner with the right business culture on its side. T-Systems guarantees German-speaking support and has security-checked staff. It also provides support in the further development of IT landscapes. Not only that, the federally-owned company can also improve the accessibility of its applications with the help of infrastructures from the private cloud.
The modern private cloud fits the situation of the customer perfectly - it opens the door into the world of cloud-native applications and creates a great deal of flexibility in terms of accelerating the company's development and test processes.
Guido Ising, Project Manager, T-Systems
Federally-owned companies are also feeling the pressure of digitization. With long release cycles for its core applications for business-critical systems, the company can no longer keep pace with the business's need to update and innovate. The classic software development cycles need to be retired - a paradigm shift towards containers and microservices has been planned. This not only involves a transition in company culture, but also calls for infrastructures and platforms that can follow suit on the route to DevOps toolchains. From a purely in-house team directly to a hyperscaler user? This question was quickly ruled out by the company, as BSI C5 certification is not sufficient for the federally-owned company. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. The security and compliance requirements also include security checks of staff and service providers, and that's not possible for American hyperscalers. Moreover, German-speaking support based in Germany was another mandatory criterion.
There was a further challenge waiting, on a technical level. As an in-house implementer, the company relies on VMware as part of its technology strategy. This needs to remain in place, while the company work towards having a more flexible infrastructure. Future Cloud Infrastructure (FCI) is also based on VMware, meaning T-Systems has exactly the right solution for the customer. The customer decided to test the IaaS in a Proof of Concept. The modern private cloud fits the situation of the in-house team perfectly - it opens the door to the world of the cloud and creates a great deal of flexibility in terms of accelerating the company's development and test processes. The new infrastructure resources from the T-Systems data center in Frankfurt will be integrated with the infrastructures of the customer. At the same time, the customer retains a high level of influence, as the FCI is supplied purely as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Above the hypervisor, the customer has complete individual design freedom. In this way, the customer can tether its own existing LDAP to implement self-controlled two-factor authentication. As well as this, T-Systems supplies a native Kubernetes as a “Container as a Service”. A transition to Tanzu is planned as a later step, in line with the customer's technology strategy. Through the VMware-based FCI, this is very much an evolutionary step that can be implemented without enormous efforts - just like the scaling of FCI.
