ADESSO SE Dortmund, 15 September 2014 - Gesellschaft für Industrieforschung mbH has modernised the IT systems at its Chinese subsidiary in a record two-week period. It received significant support from the IT service provider adesso AG.
Gesellschaft für Industrieforschung mbH (GIF) is based in Alsdorf near Aachen, Germany and its clients include all the leading automobile manufacturers. They all use GIF's state-of-the-art test benches to evaluate new drive train and transmission systems. GIF employs a clear strategy to ensure that its IT systems are always up to date: every four or five years the company replaces the IT systems in its data centres using a "big bang" approach - rather than long-term projects to replace systems, the new solutions are implemented in one go. That allows the company to minimise disruption to the day-to-day work of its employees. The IT service provider adesso AG has been supporting that process at GIF since 2003.
Now the company has adapted this successful approach for use at its Chinese location, which was founded seven years ago. GIF Research Center China (GRC) employs 70 people at its location in Suzhou, near Shanghai. Together with GIF's head of IT, the adesso team worked on location at the company to equip its server environment with the latest hardware and software in a period of just two weeks. The new system consists of 15 virtual servers and a completely new data storage system.
The success of the project depended on a detailed changeover plan, which included all the steps involved along with their dependencies. Experience from joint modernisation projects in the past proved very valuable. Whenever possible the project team used parallel redundant systems. GIF and adesso also made optimum use of the time difference: when the working day ended in China a small core team from each company in Germany took over, so that work on the project continued almost around the clock. That meant that the company's employees in Suzhou were off line less than four hours during the entire transfer process.
"Our recipe for success was a mix of meticulous preparation in Germany and a suitable amount of flexibility during the implementation on location," said Udo Schwarz, the project manager at adesso. "We didn't just blindly follow the requirements documented at the beginning of the project. For example, when we arrived in China we found that the clients had not been handled optimally and we rapidly included that issue in the scope of the project."
"Of course, a big bang modernisation is only possible if there is a great degree of trust among all those involved. That's why we have been working with adesso for so long. We know and value each other and that gives us a secure basis for such an ambitious project," said Roland Kunkis, Head of IT at GIF. "The success of the project shows that our trust is well founded. Although we replaced the entire system, our colleagues in China hardly noticed a thing."
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