A leading manufacturer of premium watches, was facing the challenge of modernising its IT infrastructure. Cloud Foundations from Sunrise Business enabled the company to expand its IT quickly and flexibly without heavy investment in new hardware. The cloud service helped to make internal processes more efficient and laid the foundation for future digital innovations.

Customer

SwissWatch* GmbH is a renowned manufacturing company headquartered in Basel with 30 employees. The company produces high-quality watches for the international market and focuses on delivering maximum precision and quality.

IT plays a central role in its operations, as it not only controls the production processes, but is also responsible for managing sensitive design data and customer details.

That is why a reliable, high-performing IT infrastructure is essential for ensuring the quality and efficiency of manufacturing and meeting global market conditions.

Background

Up until now, the entire IT infrastructure has been managed via local servers. However, these have increasingly reached their limits, resulting in longer processing times and restrictions in production control.

The existing IT environment has also made it more difficult to introduce new software solutions to improve production processes and provide quality assurance. The company wanted to expand its IT quickly, but acquiring new servers would have entailed high purchase costs and long delivery times.

In-house IT expertise is limited, so maintaining and supporting on-premises systems would result in high outsourcing costs. There was also a risk that some of the new capacity would remain unused.

The management was looking for a flexible, cost-effective solution to enable rapid growth without tying up unnecessary resources. A fast and secure way to process data and make production processes more efficient was urgently needed.

Why Cloud Foundations

With Cloud Foundations from Sunrise Business, SwissWatch GmbH was able to move its IT resources and digital workflows to the cloud in a matter of days without having to invest large sums of money.

The service includes access to and set-up of a cloud account from AWS and up to four hours of consultancy support from a certified cloud expert each month . As a result, the IT team at SwissWatch GmbH was able to focus fully on the strategic realignment of the IT landscape, while Sunrise took care of the configuration, management and security of the cloud-based infrastructure.

The new environment makes it much easier to integrate new software, and the scalable resources now allow the company to respond much more flexibly to new requirements.

Solution and collaboration

Sunrise Business worked with SwissWatch GmbH to analyse the existing challenges and developed a customised cloud strategy that was implemented step by step. Within just a few days, the new cloud environment was set up, enabling the company to scale its IT capabilities as needed. Regular consultancy support ensures that IT is continuously optimised and interacts seamlessly with existing systems. In addition, the IT team at SwissWatch GmbH receives training so it can make the best use of the new possibilities that the cloud offers. The transition took place without any interruption to ongoing operations, so there were no production shutdowns.

Additionally, a detailed migration strategy was developed to ensure the transition to digitalised workflows would be as efficient as possible. The implementation of new software for production control and quality management was made much easier by the flexible cloud environment. Sunrise helped SwissWatch GmbH to build a future-proof IT landscape that not only solves the current challenges but also promotes the digital evolution of the company both proportionately and beneficially.

Result

By migrating to the cloud, SwissWatch GmbH has been able to speed up its IT processes significantly while optimising costs. The new infrastructure is not just more powerful and flexible but also offers greater reliability. Thanks to the reduced IT load, teams can now focus more on innovative projects and the further development of the business model.

In addition, the cloud environment brings significantly improved collaboration between departments because relevant data can now be retrieved in real time. The introduction of new software solutions has been facilitated, allowing work processes to be further automated and optimised. SwissWatch GmbH is now well equipped to master future challenges efficiently and continue to consolidate its position in the market.

Advantages

• Greater efficiency thanks to cloud-based production and quality management systems

• Optimised collaboration through central access to relevant data

• No high initial investments thanks to the inexpensive subscription model

• Fast, straightforward deployment of the IT environment

• Higher scalability for future growth

• Regular personal advise from experienced cloud experts

• Better control of IT costs and better resource utilisation thanks to cost-transparent pay-as-you-go options

• Professionally managed cloud environment built for security

• Reduced reliance on physical hardware and maintenance costs

• Better integration of new software solutions

*SwissWatch GmbH is a fictitious company. Any similarities to real organisations are purely coincidental. The descriptions of the company are based on customer interviews and current market research.