Erik Sterck GmbH implements private cloud at RSM Ebner Stolz 

Leonberg, November 02, 2023  Tax consulting and auditing companies often rely on DATEV software for standard tasks. However, the standard solution that is offered as a cloud service has to be configured for individual services. Erik Sterck GmbH, a system house based in Leonberg, supports implementation and operation.

Tax consulting firms and auditing companies are faced with the challenge of having to provide increasingly individualized consulting services. To do this, the standard software used must be adapted to the specific needs of the company and its clients. In tax consulting and auditing, DATEV is one of those standard software systems that RSM Ebner Stolz has implemented and customized itself.

The company was faced with the difficulty of centralizing the entire IT infrastructure for all German locations in compliance with data protection regulations. When evaluating and reviewing the offers, it quickly became clear that traditional infrastructure solutions would not meet the requirements in terms of performance and administration effort. In the end, the choice fell on the Enterprise Cloud Platform from multicloud and data center specialist Nutanix. "The first tests with DATEV applications in the cloud already showed exceptional results in terms of performance. Additionally, in a profitability calculation over five years, we were able to reduce the administration effort from two days for traditional infrastructure solutions to two hours per week. The cloud solution was therefore a win in all respects," said the IT managers at RSM Ebner Stolz. Following the decision in favor of the Nutanix cloud solution, 14 appliances of the Enterprise Cloud Platform from the NX-8000 series with 28 nodes were installed in 2016. Business-relevant workloads such as DATEV, Microsoft Exchange, Citrix XenApp and various SQL databases run on the synchronously replicated appliances. Hypervisor is VMware vSphere, which has already been in use at RSM Ebner Stolz for several years.

Cloud solutions are the infrastructure of the future 

Leonberg-based system house Erik Sterck GmbH provided support with the introduction and smooth continued operation. "RSM Ebner Stolz is a good example of the development of IT infrastructure from traditional solutions to cloud solutions, which are becoming the new standard. Customers need solutions that minimize administrative effort, are powerful and flexible in order to be able to seamlessly map changing requirements," says Erik Sterck, Managing Director and co-founder of the system house by the same name. "At the same time, the case also reflects the changing business model of system houses: Away from classic product business to consulting services and in-house services based on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform."

With the introduction of the Nutanix private cloud architecture, RSM Ebner Stolz is taking advantage of all the benefits of a flexible infrastructure environment while avoiding the potential hurdles of a public cloud architecture. Legal requirements in terms of data security and privacy are ensured, as well as a high degree of flexibility to accommodate the growth in clients and law firms. Erik Sterck GmbH focuses on consulting, sizing and implementing the new platform. As a system house with expertise in Nutanix, it is the ideal interface between customer requirements and application conditions.

Company-wide implementation 

RSM Ebner Stolz was able to roll out the central Nutanix cloud for all 16 German locations back in 2017. "The cloud solution has more than fulfilled all expectations. The calculated administration times have come true, and at the same time we only need one sixth of the space costs compared to the traditional infrastructure. We can now focus entirely on the business-relevant contribution of our applications and on innovations," says the IT manager happily. In recent years, the environment has been flexibly expanded several times and completely renewed after the initial runtime on the basis of the latest Nutanix technology. In addition, further features from the US manufacturer have been activated and successfully used in a productive environment.

Caption: Erik Sterck, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Erik Sterck GmbH. Source: Erik Sterck GmbH

About Erik Sterck GmbH 

The owner-managed Erik Sterck GmbH was founded in 2014 and is one of the most distinguished system houses in Germany. With three locations in Leonberg, Munich and Cologne, Erik Sterck GmbH provides highly professional, individual and partnership-based advice in the entire data center environment and in cloud computing services. The service portfolio is divided into two areas. 

In the data center sector, Erik Sterck GmbH represents a holistic, manufacturer-independent consulting concept. The services cover consulting, planning, delivery and implementation of data center equipment, servers, storage, converged infrastructure and cloud services. Erik Sterck GmbH has a particular focus on cybersecurity. 

In the second service area, DevOps, the focus is on automation. Customers receive comprehensive advice on operation services covering everything from improvements of IT processes to fully automated operation stacks. Requirements in the area of containerized infrastructure environments and Kubernetes are often the subject of current projects. In this way, Erik Sterck GmbH keeps the IT departments of its customers' backs free so that they can concentrate on their core tasks again.

In total, the company supports over 170 customers from all industries, primarily in the German SME sector. Erik Sterck GmbH has received numerous awards for its work, most recently the Rubrik Global Award "Cyber Recovery Partner of the Year" (2023), Arctic Wolf Networks "Partner of the Quarter" (2023) and Nutanix "Best Technical Partner" (2020).

Press contact

Isabelle Hübner
echolot public relations
Mobile: +49 160 6192247 
E-Mail: huebner@echolot-pr.de