We tend to associate VAB with breakdown assistance and recovery. So it’s clear that VAB employees need to be available at all times: nobody likes to be left waiting at the roadside. This means that the alarm centre constantly depends on an extremely reliable IT infrastructure. IT is also essential for VAB’s other activities, such as their driving school and diagnostics centre.

VAB’s customers include both individuals and companies, and they all expect impeccable service. This is why VAB called upon Cheops to manage their IT network, firewalls, storage and Wi-Fi. In doing so VAB opted for proactive management and constant monitoring. This means that VAB has no need to invest in such specialised knowledge itself and it is able to concentrate on its customer service, internal support and IT projects.

Focus on core tasks thanks to managed services

“Opting for externally managed IT services was the right decision for VAB: our IT environment has clearly gained maturity so this is certainly not an end point”, confirms Dirk Schellinck. ”From now on, we will evaluate on a yearly basis what else we can outsource. For instance, we have asked Cheops to manage five of our servers, again because we realise Cheops has the specific expertise and specialised tools to manage them proactively and avoid downtime. These servers include the specific application that operates our alarm switchboard, so we are talking about critical systems here. This project consists of different phases and after each positive evaluation we will be looking to outsource even more so we can concentrate on our core tasks.”