A success story continues in the cloud.

Software manufacturer BSI has a clear goal: the company wants to help its customers inspire their own customers. To achieve this goal, BSI invests in pioneering innovations and works with a partner capable of delivering the right IT services: Cyberlink.

The partnership between BSI and Cyberlink has deep roots. Since as early as 2007, Cyberlink has been providing connectivity services to BSI’s two locations in Baar and Baden. In the meantime, all eight BSI locations in Switzerland and Germany have been connected and networked by Cyberlink. “In 2011, colocation services were added, followed by virtual private cloud services in 2017,” explains Matthias Hobi, Project Manager and Lead BSI Cloud. However, it is not only the long-standing projects that connect the two companies. BSI and Cyberlink share the same values: short decision-making paths, flat hierarchies, and a consistent focus on customer satisfaction. Over the years, their collaboration has grown increasingly close, with BSI even supporting Cyberlink in product development.

BSI develops software. Its core products are the CRM system BSI CRM for sales, marketing, and service, as well as the digital experience platform BSI CX. In addition, BSI offers industry-specific solutions for insurance, retail, and banking. Around 70,000 users worldwide from all industries rely on BSI products. Its customer list includes well-known companies such as AMAG, Basler Versicherungen, Bank Gutmann, Degussa Bank, Swiss Post, Möbel Pfister, and SWICA. Founded in Baden in 1996, BSI later expanded to Baar, Bern, Zurich, Munich, Darmstadt, and Düsseldorf. Today, BSI employs around 320 people and generates annual revenues of nearly CHF 60 million.

To develop smart solutions that maximize the value of customers’ CRM data, BSI relies on the cloud—more specifically on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). “In the context of the software services provided by BSI and hosted on IaaS, we wanted to achieve a high degree of automation,” explains Matthias Hobi. In addition, BSI aimed for a state-of-the-art cloud solution. As a provider holding VMware’s “Cloud Verified” certification, Cyberlink was ideally positioned to meet both requirements. Further prerequisites included data hosting in Tier 3 data centers in Switzerland and the option to use dedicated server hardware to comply with existing licensing requirements. In this respect as well, Hobi’s choice of partner was clear: “Cyberlink’s IaaS service convinces us—it simply works flawlessly.”

The successful collaboration in the area of connectivity convinced BSI to also choose Cyberlink for hosting. “Flexibility played an important role here,” says Hobi. “With BSI’s growth and the increasing demands on our cloud offering, Cyberlink has always kept pace.” The services used by BSI are characterized by very high stability and reliability, with Hobi specifically highlighting the recently introduced Cyberlink S3 Storage service. The migration to the new “vCloud Director” platform was certainly the greatest challenge in their collaboration to date. However, the effort was definitely worthwhile: “Thanks to the new platform, we were able to significantly advance our automation and become even more efficient,” reports Matthias Hobi.

What has long connected BSI and Cyberlink also proved valuable in the area of virtual private cloud. They know each other, communicate transparently, and understand which solution fits best. What pleases Matthias Hobi most is having a single point of contact at Cyberlink for both connectivity and cloud topics—one who understands BSI’s requirements and offers a consumption-based billing model. The long-standing partnership that began in 2007 with the networking of BSI’s Swiss locations continues in the cloud era.