Greater efficiency, lower costs: The trading company Valora commissions T-Systems Switzerland with the operation of its data centres and ICT infrastructure. The order will run for eight years.

Its beginnings were sweeter than sugar: Valora dates back to the “Schweizer Chocoladen & Colonialhaus” founded in 1905 in Olten. The product range expanded long ago and the trading company is active worldwide, is represented at many stations, airports and petrol stations with its kiosks and has made its name as a railway station bookseller and with its press distribution activities. Valora is successful both at home and abroad, and this transnational expansion was one of the reasons for placing the major ICT order with T-Systems. This is because the Deutsche Telekom subsidiary is going to unify and standardize the customer’s ICT landscape in order to increase its IT efficiency. T-Systems is taking over the complete operation of the data centres, and harmonizing and taking full responsibility for the customer’s ICT infrastructure.
“With the expert knowledge and innovation of T-Systems we are focusing on a clear increase in the efficiency of our planning and control, and flexible support for our growth activities. At the same time we are anticipating savings and transparency in our ICT costs”, says Markus Guggenbühler, CIO at Valora. “I am delighted that in T-Systems we have found a strong partner whose innovative technologies will help us achieve our corporate objectives”.

In addition, T-Systems Switzerland is going to modernize and operate the customer’s entire Information and Communication technology, comprising the servers, networks, the staff’s end devices as well as the Helpdesk. The next important step affects the European data centres. These are going to be centralized, which will affect sites in Germany, Austria, Luxemburg and Scandinavia. As part of this, T-Systems is taking over 16 IT experts from its customer. The central application management within the competence centre for the different business platforms will be run strategically using Valora’s own resources. The outsourcing initiative will serve to focus these areas on supporting the business units in implementing the corporate strategy “Valora 4 Growth”.

Why did Valora decide on T-Systems in particular? Pierre Klatt, Managing Director of T-Systems in Switzerland, has a clear answer to this: “We are the only service provider in Switzerland able to offer Valora data centre operations and ICT infrastructure from a single source – and Europe-wide”. He explains that all the services are scalable and help increase the transparency and quality of IT as well as processes. Klatt: “We are all looking forward to working together”.