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Agility and flexibility with OVHcloud's public cloud

 

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Data protection and sustainability to meet European requirements

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Managed Kubernetes service reduces administrative overhead

Executive summary

Public mobility goes digital

As a specialist in digital and automation processes for public mobility ETC Solutions GmbH delivers solutions for public transport authorities, carriers and vehicle manufacturers. The company provides key players in public transport with scalable cloud-based SaaS platforms for digital transformation. At the heart of ETC's solution is DatNet, a production planning and control system with an integrated ITCS for the digital real-time mapping of all vehicles, personnel and events in the operational business of transport companies. It is complemented by the Q.Daba quality platform, which enables public transport authorities to measure the performance of transport services on a local, regional or national level.

With more than 25 years of experience, over 15,000 active users and approximately one billion data sets processed each day, ETC already is a market leader in the private railway sector, serving over 90% of providers in this field. ETC and the DatNet platform are also on the rise in the bus sector, paving the way for sustainable and secure local passenger transport. In light of this, ETC was looking for an economical cloud infrastructure that would keep the administrative burden as low as possible, meet high data protection requirements and live up to the company’s sustainability aspiration. Eventually, ETC found the right solution at OVHcloud.

The challenge

Looking for: flexible and agile infrastructure in a trusted and sustainable cloud

ETC Solutions was already running their platform in the cloud before switching to OVHcloud. Docker Swarm was used to orchestrate containers on a local vendor's servers. However, this setup could no longer keep pace with the company's evolution. Maintaining containers in Docker Swarm proved too cumbersome, and the long wait times for hardware requests as well as the associated costs restricted ETC’s ability to act freely. This made it increasingly difficult to meet the growing needs of customers. ETC therefore planned to move to a managed Kubernetes environment for greater flexibility. One of the main goals was to reduce the administrative overhead of the IT staff so they could focus more on their real job: application development. In addition, ETC was looking for ways to create a highly available database cluster across multiple sites in order to minimize downtime. The issue: the former provider simply couldn't offer both.

But the obvious alternative, i.e. switching to one of the big hyperscalers, was not an option for ETC. As a European company with European customers and values, it is essential for ETC to run their platform in Europe and to fully comply with European data protection standards. As a business dedicated to sustainable mobility, ETC also wants to ensure that their business partners are committed to sustainable business—an issue that many cloud providers are unfortunately still struggling with.

The solution

Found: Managed Kubernetes—European, sustainable, affordable

The first contact with OVHcloud was born of necessity, says Steve Mosch, Team Lead DevOps at ETC Solutions. "We had an incident and needed someone who could quickly provide servers. A personal contact brought us to OVHcloud, and they fortunately were able to help us immediately". Once ETC knew OVHcloud, they explored the rest of the portfolio and quickly concluded that they had the right provider for their needs. For example, OVHcloud's public cloud offering allows for running a highly available managed Kubernetes cluster, is cost transparent, and is fully compliant with GDPR standards. The fact that OVHcloud attaches great importance to the sustainable and energy-efficient operation of their data centers—especially with the innovative water cooling system, which significantly reduces energy and water consumption compared to conventional ventilation systems—made a significant difference for ETC. "We see ourselves as a creative pioneer in our industry," Mosch says. "That's why we're looking for partners who share our vision and help us stand out from the crowd. And that's what OVHcloud definitely does."

Due to the high complexity of ETC's IT architecture, migrating to OVHcloud can only be a step-by-step process, but it is also a great opportunity to revise and modernize a wide range of systems. ETC began the transition to OVHcloud with a very specific customer project: a private railway operator who was already one of ETC’s customers wanted to put 56 new trains on the rails and had to integrate them into their system from an IT perspective. "This was a great opportunity for us to use Managed Kubernetes in the field for the first time with OVHcloud—new trains in the new cloud!" says Mosch. The result reinforced ETC in their decision to choose OVHcloud. The new trains were quickly integrated into the operator's system and ETC was able to get rid of prior technical dependencies for deploying and maintaining the IT system for the customer. OVHcloud offered an additional upside since they directly put ETC in contact with an appropriate IT service provider for building the infrastructure.

The result

Sustainable cloud, sustainable business relationship

With the Managed Kubernetes service in OVHcloud’s public cloud, ETC now has state-of-the-art infrastructure that gives their development team maximum freedom and provides the highest levels of resilience for customers. In addition to the technical infrastructure OVHcloud also provides fast and straightforward customer service. "In the very rare cases of an actual issue, support has always been responsive and helped us right away. We feel extremely well looked after at OVHcloud," says Mosch. The personal contact makes OVHcloud stand out. For instance, this also includes regular face-to-face interactions with the account manager at industry meetings such as Innotrans.

With OVHcloud as a strong partner, ETC is well positioned to further support its customers in the digital transformation of public transport with reliable and cutting-edge solutions.

"To host our platform, we first wanted to ‘just’ find a provider that would meet our technical requirements for a cloud infrastructure. With OVHcloud, we've found a real partner that not only provides the ideal solution, but also shares our mindset—trusted, innovative and sustainable.“

Steve Mosch, Teamlead DevOps bei ETC Solutions