Synaigy
Piggy Bank icon

Costs halved

by migrating to the OVHcloud Public Cloud

lock

Additional security

thanks to built-in DDoS protection

padlock icon

Full GDPR compliance

with a cloud hosted entirely in Europe

The background

Security and reliability for digital customer experiences in the cloud

As a digital experience service company, the Cologne- and Dortmund-based synaigy GmbH agency combines consulting and tech services. In addition to digital consulting and managed services, synaigy places a particular focus on the development and deployment of customised e-commerce solutions for companies of all sizes and industries. "Our services accompany customers for years," says Joubin Rahimi, Managing Partner at synaigy, explaining the company’s approach. “A journey with synaigy can start with advice on the strategic implementation of a digital sales platform. We optimise this 'creation' for the business model at the 'human-machine interface' to ensure a unique user experience. What we have advised on, developed and enhanced together we can then implement and later operate."

In order to set up and host their customers' highly diverse e-commerce environments, community platforms and CMS – which may vary in both scope and composition – as securely and efficiently as possible, synaigy requires a matching cloud platform. Above all, this platform needs to be quickly and easily scalable so that it can handle volatile workloads on customer platforms at all times without any loss of performance.

The challenge

Wanted: European cloud with cost transparency and easy orchestration

Before synaigy moved to OVHcloud, the e-commerce specialist was mainly using the cloud solutions of large US providers. However, as business grew, disadvantages in terms of usability and especially costs became more and more noticeable.

Moreover, the non-European headquarters of these previous providers increasingly proved to be an obstacle, as many customers in Germany – concerned about data protection and the GDPR compliance of their e-commerce platforms – did not want to support solutions from the so-called "GAFA" (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) group.synaigy was therefore looking for a European alternative that had to be on a par with the "big" US providers in terms of technology, and offer a more transparent and competitive cost structure.

As the company had already been running their existing applications in a cluster with their previous cloud provider, the technical challenge for synaigy consisted of transferring these to a new, OpenStack-based cloud platform without any loss in performance. Additionally, synaigy also planned to increase the use of container orchestration via Kubernetes for the applications of smaller customers in order to further optimise deployment, resilience and scalability.

The solution

Found: Public cloud with integrated Kubernetes services and DDoS protection

synaigy spent around three months intensively searching for and evaluating cloud providers that met these requirements.After an in-depth assessment and comparison process, the company decided on OVHcloud's public cloud.

A key criterion was the integration of Kubernetes to automate the deployment, scaling and management of applications within the cluster. "We spoke to a number of providers, but none of the others were equal to OVHcloud in terms of performance and experience with Kubernetes," explains Marc Achsnich, Team Lead Managed Services & Software Development at synaigy. "When it comes to Kubernetes, OVHcloud offers one of the most advanced solutions.”

Another unique selling point in favour of OVHcloud was the built-in, free protection against DDoS attacks for layers 4 to 7 – a protection that synaigy can now in turn offer their customers as an additional benefit in terms of security for their web applications.

With OVHcloud's public cloud, synaigy has a private layer 2 network across all sites that can be used to distribute loads flexibly and without compromising on security and reliability. In addition, the company now has the certainty that their data and that of their customers is securely stored in European and fully GDPR-compliant data centres, and can also market this competitive advantage to their customers. “In Europe for Europe”, as Joubin Rahimi sums up the shared values of synaigy and OVHcloud.

Last but not least, OVHcloud was also able to score points with synaigy as a "green" company that attaches great importance to the climate-neutral operation of its data centres and builds its own, energy-efficient servers. After all, sustainability is no longer just a "nice to have": "Among the five highest-quality offers that we looked at more closely at the end of our selection process, this criterion turned out to be the icing on the cake," confirms Marc Achsnich.

"With OVHcloud, we can develop and deploy our customers' digital platforms in a highly scalable cloud environment with the highest standards of security and data protection. In this way, OVHcloud helps us to successfully shape the future of our customers in the long term.”

Joubin Rahimi, Managing Partner at synaigy

The result

Cost-effective and scalable cloud infrastructure for future-proof e-commerce platforms

So as not to take any chances with the reliability of their services, synaigy initially only migrated a few selected production and test systems to the new environment in order to familiarise themselves with the OVHcloud Public Cloud during this "settling-in phase". The results of this initial phase confirmed that synaigy had chosen the right partner with OVHcloud.

synaigy diagram

 

The core objective – reducing costs – has been fully achieved, with operating costs halved as a result of the migration to OVHcloud. This means that synaigy is able to provide their customers with an offer that is equally appealing and profitable.

The switch to OVHcloud also proved to be a step forward in terms of user-friendliness. For example, configuring and maintaining the load balancers to distribute the traffic load proved to be much easier with OVHcloud than with previous cloud providers. This pays off especially in e-commerce at times of peak demand – such as Black Friday or the Christmas shopping season – as short-term peaks can be balanced out more easily thanks to larger buffers. In addition, the node pools within Kubernetes are easier to manage and the Docker Registry also features a Helm Registry, which was not the case with the previous provider. Automated vulnerability analyses provide additional security for container management. The provision of static IP addresses is also much easier than before with OVHcloud's public cloud.

Given the positive experience with OVHcloud, synaigy's plan for the near future is to successively transfer around two more customers per quarter to the new OVHcloud environment – with the target scenario of operating 40 customer environments in one cluster. As a result, synaigy is better positioned than ever to successfully drive forward the digitalisation of their customers and improve their overall experience.

“OVHcloud stands out in the cloud provider market in several respects: its expertise in Kubernetes is unrivalled, and with the built-in DDoS protection and special focus on sustainability, OVHcloud has USPs that are becoming increasingly important for customers today."

Marc Achsnich, Team Lead Managed Services & Software Development at synaigy