Customer Profile
The ORCA Services AG was founded in 2005, but the company has been on the market since 1987. At that time the ORCA Services AG was still part of ORCA Solution AG with which it currently forms the ORCA Group. Group-wide, more than 40 employees support end customers in the areas of software development, e-commerce, consulting, HR consulting, and IT infrastructure solutions.
Nowadays, the ORCA Services AG focuses on web application development.
The Challenge
Initially, ORCA started as an ISP. Over time their business model began to change, and with that, the requirements for their infrastructure changed as well. In the first few years of their business ORCA was operating their own data center at a central location in Basel, Switzerland.
The first and most important criteria for ORCA was to find a cloud provider that offers a Swiss location. However, the hyperscale providers that the company was considering initially offered platforms that were too complicated and time-consuming to operate. Not only that, but most big VPS providers couldn’t provide a guarantee that they could host the data of ORCA’s customers within Switzerland.
ORCA was also looking to find an intuitive solution that would give them full control over their infrastructure. They needed a self-service platform that would provide sufficient flexibility to deploy the amounts of RAM, CPU and disk they wanted at the time they needed them and with a click of a button.
Another problem ORCA was trying to solve was to minimize the costs of operating their own data center. As their business was refocusing from an ISP to web development, the costs of maintaining skilled staff, hardware replacement, datacenter rent, power, etc. became distracting to their business. They needed a cost-efficient solution to take away the hardware maintenance part from them and save them both costs and time. ORCA wanted a cloud provider that would ensure a simple and transparent cloud pricing model.
“We were looking for a cloud provider that besides savings in costs could give us flexibility. We wanted to be able to focus on our main business of developing software instead of also having to maintain hardware.” – Marc Würth, Head of Development @ ORCA Services AG
Finally, as some of the other cloud vendors they have been working with did not offer immediate customer support, ORCA aimed to find cloud services that provide technical support that responds fast and effectively.
The Solution
ORCA had found CloudSigma on a tech news website, and decided to test the platform as there were very few Swiss cloud providers that covered their requirements.
“The top reason for choosing CloudSigma at first was that it was able to provide a guarantee to us that our data and the data of our customers will be hosted in Switzerland.” – Marc Würth, Head of Development @ ORCA Services AG
Besides location, ORCA chose CloudSigma as it was offering effective solutions to the issues they wanted to solve. First, with CloudSigma ORCA has the unique ability to freely create virtual machines with the combination of CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth they require. In addition, they utilize the intuitive web browser-based GUI of CloudSigma where they can manage their resources with a simple click of a button.
“We really like the easy to use self-service back end of CloudSigma. It gives us the flexibility to set up and change our deployment when needed. With another provider we would need to call or write by email and set up new contracts every time we want to update our machines. With CloudSigma, we can do that by a few simple clicks.” Marc Würth, Head of Development @ ORCA Services AG
Another decisive factor that made CloudSigma the preferred cloud provider for ORCA was its flexible pricing model.
“We saw very early that CloudSigma has a good business model that offers extremely transparent pricing. Together with the Swiss location, its flexible and self-provisioning pricing model motivated us to go for CloudSigma.” – Marc Würth, Head of Development @ ORCA Services AG
In addition, with CloudSigma ORCA can rely on highly qualified technical support completely free of charge. Initially, ORCA was not sure whether chat support would work for them. Luckily, they soon realized that it was a breeze.
In terms of the implementation process, ORCA found it very easy to set up their servers on CloudSigma’s platform.
“It was quite easy to migrate to CloudSigma, because we simply set up some new servers, deployed our application, and then at a certain point in time we migrated the data and switched over the DNS and that was it. Everything else around it, the provisioning and administrative tasks, including cost, etc. were very easy and we didn’t face any issues.”Marc Würth, Head of Development @ ORCA Services AG
The Impact
ORCA has been CloudSigma’s client since 2013, and since then they have been quite happy with their choice. Most importantly, CloudSigma’s easy-to-use self-service platform provided them with the flexibility to set up new infrastructure for their various projects.
“With other Swiss providers we have to waste a considerable amount of time when we need to set up a new project. And in our business, we have to react very quickly. Working with CloudSigma is very satisfying as we can provision our machines very fast and it is very simple.”Rolf Gerber, CEO @ ORCA Services AG
Another positive change for ORCA was that thanks to using CloudSigma, they were able to save on the costs that come along with maintaining their own data center.
“It’s hard to pinpoint the exact amount of cost reduction we’ve had since moving to the cloud, but we are now paying from 10 to 20 % less compared to when we were operating our own location.” – Rolf Gerber, CEO @ ORCA Services AG
Furthermore, ORCA has been taking advantage of CloudSigma’s free 24×7 skilled customer support service. As a result, ORCA is able to resolve their issues much faster which improved their service offering. Relying on high-quality technical support increased ORCA’s confidence that any issues will be solved on time and without much hassle.
“We have also been working with another VPS provider. With them we have to wait for the support, or we have to call and then they have two hours until they answer. With CloudSigma, the chat support is extremely fast and effective.” – Marc Würth, Head of Development @ ORCA Services AG
As for ORCA’s customers, the company works with clients from diverse industries including government, public transport, insurance, and many more. They have different applications hosted on CloudSigma, including intranet and extranet applications, as well as some B2B and some B2C platforms. Fortunately, since deploying on CloudSigma, ORCA didn’t have much end-user feedback which the company considers a good sign.
“The good thing is that we don’t have much- if any- feedback from our customers. That’s a good thing because most often, as a provider of any kind of IT services, you normally only hear from customers when there are some sort of performance problems. And since we haven’t had any big issues with our customers since using CloudSigma, everybody’s happy.”Marc Würth, Head of Development @ ORCA Services AG
The Future
CloudSigma will stay one of the main and preferred options for ORCA’s future hosting projects. ORCA’s plans are to continue to expand, and there is no doubt that they will need to increase their deployment as they grow.
In terms of geographical locations, most of ORCA’s clients are from industries that are very concerned with privacy and data protection, and for that, they tend to prefer Switzerland as a location. At the same time, ORCA doesn’t exclude trying some of the other locations from CloudSigma’s wide range of cloud offerings. For example, they would consider CloudSigma’s second Swiss location in Geneva or any other European location as a backup.
“ORCA specializes in building the solutions our clients demand. If a customer wants a specific application or a service that is not yet on the market, we will build it for them. So, if we have a customer that wants a product in Germany or in other countries, of course, then we will go to another infrastructure in another country from CloudSigma. We hope we can do that in future.” – Rolf Gerber, CEO @ ORCA Services AG
Finally, ORCA is very happy with CloudSigma’s services and would not hesitate to recommend CloudSigma to any potential customers.
“We fully recommend CloudSigma’s solution to any potential users. Get in touch with the friendly people at CloudSigma and see for yourself.” – Marc Würth, Head of Development @ ORCA Services AG
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