The IT & Consultancy division of the renowned Dutch firm, Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé began its search in the fall of 2007 for a hosting provider that would be able to offer a stable, safe and rapidly scalable hosting network. It was also essential that the provider have knowledge of virtualization, and be carbon-neutral. At the time, Joh. Enschedé observed that “LeaseWeb is a hosting provider with a green offer, a global reputation and a highly redundant network, which significantly minimizes the likelihood of malfunctions.”

THE ORGANIZATION

Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé (e.g., Joh. Ensch.) is a prominent family-owned Dutch printing company founded in the city of Haarlem in 1703. Current lines of business for the company include printing Euros for the EU and postage stamps for over sixty countries. In recent years the firm has developed business lines in the advanced digital publishing sector. Some of the clients that the IT & Consultancy division provides complex application services to include Adobe, Mitsubishi Motors Europe and Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol).

MICROSOFT, LINUX AND VMWARE

An advanced hosting environment is required to ensure that such complex applications run properly. “We therefore also offer hosting services ourselves, so that our clients can benefit from a turn-key platform,” says Edwin van Voorbergen, ICT Project Manager at Joh. Enschedé IT & Consultancy. “However, we are not a hosting company and therefore purchase hosting facilities. We opted for LeaseWeb because they have a wealth of experience with Microsoft, Linux and VMware. The company also enjoys a global reputation and I think that its facilities for co-located customers are superb. Reliability, continuity, numerous carriers – LeaseWeb truly leads the way in that respect. Furthermore, we do not have a network of our own and LeaseWeb, however, does – a very extensive one I might add – that significantly reduces the likelihood of fatal malfunctions.”

AMSTERDAM AIRPORT (SCHIPHOL)

JEA PLUS 2 is one of the advanced software solutions that Joh. Enschedé utilizes and provides to its clients. One example of its application is how it is integrated with Google Maps so that Woonnet-Rijnmond, a Joh. Enschedé client, is able to display over 10,000 homes available for rent online with an interactive medium. The firm has also implemented JEA PLUS2 to create a customized web portal for Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol) to handle the large volume of complaints (over 1.2 million per year) registered by people that live in the surrounding area. Van Voorbergen advises, “[that] This therefore entails enormous data-intensive environments that demand advanced hosting solutions dependent on specialist knowledge. We rely heavily on the engineers at LeaseWeb for their hosting expertise. You can suffer a negative effect on front-end performances when you fail to properly set-up the storage of the hosting solution.”

VIRTUAL HOSTING

Joh. Enschedé IT & Consultancy has virtualized their underlying server environment with the help of VMware so that they could continue to meet increasing customer demand for complex applications. Says Van Voorbergen, “a survey revealed that we only utilized 20 percent of our resources in the old situation. We were running dedicated servers for customers in different racks across various data centers. Using this infrastructure, we could have therefore actually increased the number of services we provided by a factor of five - that was a pity. A virtual environment enables us to use resources far more efficiently and also facilitates scalability. The support that LeaseWeb provides for VMware is useful for us in that respect.”

A DELIBERATE 'GREEN' CHOICE

LeaseWeb houses its virtual server environment at EvoSwitch, a climate-neutral and energy-efficient data center. “Potential clients increasingly ask whether our services are environmentally friendly,” says Lennart de Graaff, Business Unit Manager at Joh. Enschedé IT & Consultancy. “It also coincides with the vision of our management team. LeaseWeb ultimately supplied us with a wonderful “green solution” at a data center that is not only energy-efficient, but also notable for the facilities it provides. These include biometric security, the most stringent standard for information security (ISO 27001), its partnership with top-level knowledge partner TNO, an autonomous power supply, and its big energy capacity.”

HOSTING GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES

Generally speaking, the IT service provider is expecting an increased demand for scalability. Van Voorbergen says, “Consider solutions for automating form flows, such as the processing of license applications or tax assessments via the Internet. This will cause a corresponding growth in the data center. Thankfully the EvoSwitch datacenter has substantial floor space and extensive opportunities for growth at its disposal. LeaseWeb also provides a rapidly scalable hosting network and has many Dell hardware components in stock. This gives us the guarantee that we will be able to meet the demand of our customers well into the future.”