Hubo still has a data centre at its head office in Wommelgem, but this had become too small. When the company needed to expand it to absorb the growth in its operations, a strategic decision had to be made. “We had been working hard on our IT for a number of years, including the implementation of a new ERP package and linking applications,” says Stefan Draulans, ICT Manager at Hubo Belgium. “This makes the whole IT environment even more critical: if something goes wrong, it has far-reaching consequences for Hubo stores. For example, the checkout application and the payment systems must always be available. At the same time, as an IT department we have to continue responding to the demands of the business in a flexible way.”

External expertise

Opting for Cheops as a Managed Service Provider was an obvious choice to some extent, but Hubo did not rush into this decision. “We have been working with Cheops as an IT partner for more than ten years now, but we approached several parties to develop a plan for our data centre,” says Jan Van Regenmortel, Senior System Administrator at Hubo. “Cheops gave the best answers to our questions. Cheops helped to develop our vision for hybrid cloud and provided support with their technical expertise throughout the entire project. The specialists at Cheops have every possible IT certificate and their knowledge is always up-to-date.”