To host its mobile data services Vodafone selected OpenStack as the open and scalable foundation for its virtualized evolved packet core deployment. Vodafone wanted to move their proprietary solution to an open cloud solution in order not to rely on proprietary technology. Secondly, they wanted to add capabilities to a more flexible and independent scale. Furthermore, Vodafone wanted to expand their service offerings. More so, they wanted to innovate and get their infrastructure ready for containerization, 5G, NFV & edge computing. Vodafone is aiming at onboarding telco specific applications successfully on their platform and to incorporate innovations. They also wanted to outsource the management of their infrastructure to an external partner. Vodafone chose Fairbanks as their partner to achieve these objectives. 

KPN has setup an OpenStack platform with their own infrastructure teams to prepare the organization and suppliers for virtualizing and containerization of the telco applications. Fairbanks performed an independent review of the technical readiness of such a platform for telecom applications and advised on the models how to combine and integrate experts from KPN and their infra and telco suppliers to optimize operational excellence as well as innovation power.

SURF replaces the network infrastructure every six years with newer, faster and more advanced technology and was looking for the best way to achieve this. Together, we tuned the design of the Open Infrastructure cloud to the required specifications and size to run on-site, in the SURF’s datacenter. We designed the cloud infrastructure with strong focus on working closely together with the SURF teams. Additionally we added networking functionality by developing a VPP and Tacker Charm specialized for SURF.

”Fairbanks is persistent and knowledgable in Nova, VPP and other aspects of OpenStack. As in the development of most new solutions we ran into some difficulties but Fairbanks always continued. We chose to work with Fairbanks because Fairbanks was the party in The Netherlands that had the widest and most knowledge about Open Infrastructure to make this a successful project. Furthermore, we don’t manage the environment ourselves. Fairbanks is specialized in managing an open infrastructure cloud environment. That is a huge benefit to us. We don’t have to worry about it”.

Eyle Brinkhuis – SURF NFV specialist

Voxbone is a cloud communications (IaaS) company based in Brussels (Belgium), London (United Kingdom), Los Angeles and San Francisco (California). Voxbone enables telephony applications such as conferencing and contact centers to receive phone calls and text messages. The company’s services are accessed through a web portal or REST API. Voxbone’s networking services are delivered over a private IP network that interconnects with local phone networks in the countries where it operates. To provide infrastructure and network services near their customers, Fairbanks helped designing, implementing and improving an edge infrastructure based on OpenStack.

Delta Electronics, founded in 1971, is a global provider of power and thermal management solutions. According to Delta Electronics their mission is “To provide innovative, clean and energy-efficient solutions for a better tomorrow”. Delta Electronics focuses on addressing key environmental issues such as global climate change. 

“To truly achieve flexibility for our customers while similtanuously achieving minimal power consumption, we realized advanced orchestration of system and networking resources are key. That’s why we wanted to be able to integrate the OpenStack Cloud platform and Open Networking in our solutions.” Milo Tseng, Director of Business Development of Delta Electronics in the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region, says. “Together with our technology partners such as Fairbanks we designed and implemented this private cloud infrastructure already successfully at a customer of Delta, a fast growing customer in security in Northern Africa,”

“The cooperation with Fairbanks was very adequate and smooth. From the start of the project to the delivery of the platform we worked together as one team. That enabled us to learn more about both the implementation and the platform itself. The consultants also were very open and clear about what they were doing and about the current status of the project. We expect to deliver many more of these agile and efficient cloud solutions in the datacenter centers of our customers.”
Milo Tseng – Director of Business Development

Sandvine is a leading provider of intelligent broadband network solutions for fixed and mobile operators. Sandvine’s network policy control solutions are deployed in more than 300 networks in over 100 countries, serving hundreds of millions of data subscribers worldwide. Sandvine offers unparalleled, actionable insight into Internet traffic on CSPs network of all sizes. The Network Policy Control applications give CSPs the flexibility to enable new and innovative services, engage with subscribers on real time through a variety of channels, protect the network from malicious threats and improve the Quality of Experience of the network.

“In order to deploy products at the largest tier-1 networks globally, the continuous improvement of quality and efficiency of our applications is paramount.” Says Alex Rutgers of Sandvine: “To continuously enhance our software development process, we have implemented a centralized development environment for our OutReach product. With Fairbanks we found a skillful partner to augment our internal cloud expertise. The optimization of our Cloud infrastructure enables Sandvine to continue delivering carrier grade applications to our CSP customers worldwide.”

Alex Rutgers – AVP Engineering

Currently The University of Luxembourg hosts big data services with OpenStack. However, before applying OpenStack, valuable data are generated but usually remained local and lacked a broader use, within research projects all over Europe. ELIXIR, the European infrastructure for life science information, aims to provide access to this wealth of bioinformatics tools and biological data. ELIXIR-LU, the Luxembourgish ELIXIR node, hosts big data services for Translational Medicine data: the integration of clinical information with molecular and cellular data that to gain a better understanding of diseases. This data bridges the gap between the molecular level findings from the laboratory and the clinical observations and applications. The readdressing of previously generated translational data to new research questions dramatically saves time and costs of medical research.

“Nowadays a major hurdle in the use of biomedical data by a wider research community is the lack of suitable data management systems that collect and integrate all types of data. Due to the sensitive nature of these data and the security requirements, handling access can also be quite complex. To provide solutions ELIXIR-LU has developed and hosts a repository for high quality Translational Medicine Data. The platform combines high-performance and highly secured data access and computing services. The platform for efficient data access and analysis is powered by our Ubuntu OpenStack Private Cloud, that was built and is supported by Fairbanks. We can orchestrate, provision and manage this cloud with tooling such as MAAS, Juju and Landscape.”

Dr. Christophe Trefois, Dipl.-Ing. 

Every day millions of people around the world depend on TomTom to make smarter decisions. TomTom designs and develops innovative products for portable navigation devices, automotive Connected Navigation Systems, Highly Automated Driving and fleet management that make it easy for people to keep moving towards their goals. Best known for being a global leader in navigation and mapping products, TomTom also creates GPS sports watches, as well as state-of-the-art fleet management solutions and industry-leading location-based products. To fuel a continuous stream of improvements and innovations, TomTom builds on a growth- and performance-oriented culture that embraces teamwork, the drive for excellence, mobility and empowerment of employees. To facilitate this, Fairbanks developed for TomTom, based on the Canonical software suite, a specific office automation environment to be able to deliver the Ubuntu desktops for the employees in a fast, efficient and a controlled way.

“Fairbanks automated the process for deployment and monitoring of Ubuntu clients for our engineers and developers worldwide, including the installation of specific software for specific individual developers or groups of developers. Fairbanks also integrated the ability to keep the software updated continuously, rapidly, reliably and repeatedly, at low risk and with minimal manual overhead using native Canonical tooling. Thus enabling our development teams to focus on creating value for our customers without interruptions. We are very happy with the result as well as the swift and agile manor in which Fairbanks realized the results in collaboration with our system engineers. Creating the value we needed, in time and on budget. A great example of the way we like to work ourselves at TomTom.”

Bart Verlinde – Sr. Mgr. Employee Technology Engineering in IT

Fingent is a Global IT company that crafts strategic IT business solutions enabling business success. The main office is based in White Plains, New York.

“Since our inception in 2003, we have pioneered custom solutions that have become central components in our client’s business success. Our vast technology and industry expertise enables us to partner with clients to deliver sophisticated solutions rapidly and on budget. For us, it is not only about delivering IT services, but also about playing a part in business efforts to shape a brighter and smarter future. In 2016 we started our first OpenStack implementation. We had some questions about the implementation and contacted Fairbanks to assist us in completing the proof of concept. Although they are based overseas, they reacted very fast and consistent. Even when we needed input from our technical resources based in Kochi, India, we planned and managed the collaboration across three time zones. We worked together completely offsite via a conference system and after the first support session, Fairbanks helped us to take the next steps. Fairbanks supported us with designing a new production deployment in the Marlborough, Massachusetts Tierpoint Datacenter and also helped with creating backups and test restores for the current ‘development OpenStack platform’ in our TierPoint Datacenter in Hawthorne, New York. The approach of Fairbanks has been extraordinary successful, and it is clear they have built up years of experience regarding OpenStack and open source software. On top of this experience, they are able to use this experience in complex projects and also to get things done. Fairbanks listened to our challenges and directly followed up on them with options for different solutions, helping Fingent creating a successful OpenStack platform which we can use within our business strategy. The support we receive was very helpful, Fairbanks is a very professional and flexible organization; a pleasure to work with.”

Omar Khan – Director of Strategic Relationships

“ActiveVideo, located at the Media Park in Hilversum, is developer of a Cloud TV solution. This is a cloud – based software platform which allows service providers, content aggregators and CE manufacturers to virtualize CPE functions in the cloud. This is part of delivering next-generation user interfaces, online content and interactive advertising to millions of TV -related connected devices. Fairbanks has been able to implement their knowledge and expertise in the creation of our OpenStack private cloud environment. Furthermore, the management of the OpenStack cloud infrastructure is carried out by the IT after implementation. And even still, Fairbanks provides support on the OpenStack production environment.”

Andre Blum – Director of Engineering

Realtime Solutions is a leader in ‘cloud-based’ logistic services. They support various high-profile customers with logistic challenges and their software is present in all processes so that they can respond quickly in the fast changing market. Their strength is to implement a Warehouse Management System scalable and fast within a few days in order to have a quick return on investment.

“Realtime Solutions introduced a new Warehouse Management System, especially for the midsize market. We expect a rapid adoption due to fast integration in the existing logistical systems. We want to offer the ability to grow rapidly without major investments. With OpenStack, Fairbanks accomplished an infrastructure that gives us the ability to scale up fast and be a public cloud provider like AWS, but with a private datacenter. With the expertise and persistence of Fairbanks, we can serve our customers so they can serve theirs.”

Harm van den Broek – Director

One of the customers is ODC-Noord: “The Overheids DataCenter-Noord provides datacenter and hosting services to government institutions within the Netherlands. ODC-Noord is one of the 4 government datacenters implementing the policy of the government to consolidate the number of datacenters to 4. ODC-Noord acquired floorspace within a datacenter built by KPN. ODC-Noord has built an IT-infrastructure in this datacenter based on an OpenStack Cloud and Ceph Storage environment. As an independent expert in the field of OpenStack, Fairbanks has helped us with the auditing of the chosen architecture and design. Recently, ODC-Noord has decided to offer the participating governmental parties the hosting services also based on the community versions. To build the necessary knowledge and experience and to contribute to the development of the community versions, ODC-Noord has composed an internal development team and sought assistance from an external partner with knowledge within the Netherlands. Fairbanks is one of the parties providing us with up to date knowledge in the case that our own experts can’t find a solution. Fairbanks thus supports ODC-Noord to expand our hosted environment exponentially with more or less constant administrative expenses. And that’s where our customers are asking for.”

“Fairbanks did a great job training our people with OpenStack. They showed us the different cloud models and positioned OpenStack within these models and also specified the architecture, security, networking, management and storage components.  The trainer had hands on experience with al the components and within a short period of time he increased the OpenStack knowledge of our team significantly”.

Charlotte Newsman – Director European Patent Office

“The Royal Dutch Pharmacists Association (Koninklijke Nederlandse Maatschappij ter bevordering der Pharmacie, KNMP) is the umbrella organization for both professional pharmacists and the pharmacy in general, and it promotes both the interests of its members and the interests of the pharmaceutical sector in general. Because of the ‘insourcing’ of the ICT department, we asked Fairbanks to support us with the infrastructure, storage, monitoring, backup restore and with the virtualization of an environment. Also Fairbanks supported us with a service level agreement. We are very happy about the professional working methods of Fairbanks; they helped us very efficiently, which enabled us to focus on our own business.”

Bill Marks – Manager ICT & Business Innovation at KNMP

“Kuehne + Nagel is a global transportation and logistics company. It offers all modes of international transport – by sea, by air and by land – and manages worldwide more than 7 million square meters of storage. In the Netherlands, a total of 2,700 employees operate at 22 different locations. Fairbanks supports us with the protection of the physical environment (‘physical security’). They designed this ‘physical security’ environment, carried out the implementations for us, and provide support when necessary. Especially the flexible approach of Fairbanks, the active involvement with our company and the fast and proper answers to our questions, for me are important elements for a long-term partnership between Kuehne + Nagel and Fairbanks.”

Teunis van Hooft – IT Business Architect

“Children living in poverty deserve to advance and prosper in life. Contributing to that together, is one of the richest things you can do in your life. World Vision listens to children and tackles the causes of poverty and injustice. We do this without making any distinction as to religion, race or political persuasion. Seeing through religious boundaries, we make a difference in nearly 100 countries and millions of lives. That’s what enables us to help the world’s most poor and vulnerable people. The ICT environment that supports us, requires specialist knowledge. At Fairbanks, this knowledge is always available. Their passion, commitment and expertise are very high compared with other companies. You can count on them in times of need. An attitude that fits well with ours. Fairbanks is a pleasant partner to do business with.”

René Noort – Controller

“SMT is a leading full service distribution company, specialized in construction equipment, crane and material handling, recycling and port equipment in the Benelux. SMT has in its range brands like Volvo Construction Equipment, Sennebogen, Sandvik, Sany, Perlini and MAFI. With the offerings of the sales- and rental possibilities as well as maintenance and repair services and spare part sales, SMT provides her customers with ‘one stop shop’ solutions. In the years that we have worked with Fairbanks, we have found out that they work in a similar way as we do. They offer technical solutions, supported by strong brands, possess technical expertise and provide one-stop shop solutions if desired. Fairbanks takes project responsibility when needed and also supports us after the delivery of the project with support and advice. This way we have successfully carried out several migration and storage projects. The open and clear way of communicating fits well with our own culture. Fairbanks is a very flexible partner with an excellent level of knowledge.”

Servaas van der Voort – Manager ICT SMT

 “Compassion International is a child-advocacy ministry that pairs compassionate people with those who are suffering from poverty. Due to the international character of the organization, the automation, networking connections and up-time are very important aspects. We have our own IT Department and Fairbanks supports them whenever we haven’t got the necessary knowledge or time available to execute our projects. The consultants of Fairbanks have always shown a high level of knowledge and good resolving skills. Communication has also always run smoothly. We therefore are very pleased with Fairbanks and the services they provide.”

Klaas Jansen – Sponsor Donor Services Manager

“Weesp is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. The town has about 18,500 inhabitants and covers an area of nearly 22 square kilometres. In the IT field we consider ourselves progressive. Since 2012 we have started a unique and enjoyable partnership with Fairbanks. Fairbanks has supported us in realizing a stable base environment and support us with the IT projects. To everyone’s satisfaction we work with Dell techniques because they are both reliable and affordable. Fairbanks always supports us with our planned IT projects and provides no-nonsense, straightforward, clear and open advice. Without compromising on the reliability of our services, we can make our ambition as an innovative municipality organization come true.”

Marco Maij – Projectmanager / Advisor ICT

“We were searching for a flexible workplace environment. The solution had to meet our critical requirements with regard to the cost of licenses and management. Based on these criteria, Fairbanks advised us a virtual desktop infrastructure with OpenStack and implemented a basic VDI for us. They supported us during the project with answering additional questions and supplementary advice. Although, Woonzorg Netherlands still has not decided whether to invest in a VDI infrastructure, we are very pleased with the insights we gained in this project and the way Fairbanks has supported us.”

Jacques Martens – Adviseur ICT RvB at Woonzorg Nederland

“AxionContinu is a healthcare organization dedicated to and focused on supporting care recipients, mostly elderly, in the field of housing, (home) care, rehabilitation and recovery. Care recipients living in the city and region of Utrecht are offered high-quality care and services. Fairbanks supported us advising and implementing our storage and backup environment. Additionally they helped us determine our recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). Fairbanks has assessed additional measures that were necessary to meet the minimum RPO and RTO. Fairbanks delivered a clear proposal which included a fair re-use of existing infrastructure components that AxionContinu could reuse within the existing infrastructure.”

Pierre Hogers – Manager ICT Axioncontinu

“With the help of Fairbanks all our major ICT services are virtualized, including our ERP, Exchange- and SQL-environment. This went so quietly, no one in the organization has really noticed. The first Fail over tests have been executed and are a success. In case of a failure, ICT services can quickly be restored with the backup data. It is a compliment for the ICT staff of Ymere and the engineers of Fairbanks that these results have been achieved in less than 3 months’ time.”

Ed de Myttenaere – Manager ICT

“New housing is not just another address or a new environment. It means space for Hevoïsten to develop well. Space where collaboration and knowledge sharing is encouraged. The collaboration with Fairbanks was excellent. The objectives of the project were satisfactorily achieved. The collaboration was characterized by an open and honest environment in which employees of Fairbanks and Hevo could approach each other with respect and have kept each other sharp by giving and receiving the right feedback. The project approach of Fairbanks is characterized by terms such as highly professional, responsible and flexible.”

Hans Stans – Manager ICT

“The cooperation between Espria Foundation and Fairbanks is characterized by adapting to changing situations. First Fairbanks supplied hardware and software. Later on Fairbanks supported the implementation and management of the datacenter with relevant expertise and knowledge. With every new situation, Fairbanks helped us to find the best solution to contribute to the success of Espria.”

Olav Palm – Manager IT Shared Service Center Espria