Gothaer future-proofs its application infrastructure with SUSE Rancher

“To accelerate the pace of digital transformation, we need to remove operational complexity and ensure consistent, automated and secure processes for developing and deploying containerized applications. That’s exactly what SUSE Rancher is helping us do today.” Andreas Rother, Team Leader Pipeline and Container Services, Gothaer Systems GmbH.

The Gothaer Group, one of Germany’s major insurance companies, has an extensive IT landscape that is undergoing rapid digital transformation. Gothaer Systems, the Gothaer Group’s central IT service provider, is responsible for more than 300 applications, including the groupwide CRM system, and numerous web services.

In 2016 the decision was made to migrate to a container-based architecture with a view to saving money on software licensing costs and being able to implement new IT requirements faster, especially applications and services that improved efficiency while providing optimal user experience.

However, it had become apparent that the original container management platform selected was not fit for purpose. The Gothaer team realized it needed a platform that supports hybrid scenarios and multi-cloud strategies, causing them to reexplore the container management platform market.

After assessing a range of container management solutions SUSE Rancher was selected as the best fit, as a result of meeting Gothaer’s security, integration and management efficiency criteria. SUSE Rancher also impressed due to its automated installation capabilities and easy to manage authentication features.

High user satisfaction right from the start

Once the team selected SUSE Rancher, implementation proceeded quickly. Within three months, the team set up its first productive cluster integrated into the existing environment. The excellent support provided by SUSE’s Consulting Services team meant that shortly after the first phase completed Gothaer were able to run 14 applications productively using the new environment.

The greatest value add for the Gothaer team was unified management of all clusters — from development to production — at no extra cost. All Kubernetes clusters are managed centrally via a single intuitive interface. This creates operational efficiency through automation, whilst ensuring consistency, robust security and version control.

For Gothaer’s administrators and developers, the transition to the new platform was very smooth with high user satisfaction right from the start. The result is a stable platform that interacts smoothly with all the existing components of the development environment.

Full migration to SUSE Rancher is on track to complete ahead of schedule, with the new clusters running very efficiently, thanks to automated processes, and fast application migration speeds.

The flexibility gained by choosing SUSE Rancher means the Gothaer team can extend their application infrastructure into the cloud and benefit from maximum scalability and lower costs, future-proofing its architecture through multi-cloud support.

Click here to find out more about how Gothaer simplified the management of its IT environment and smoothed the pathway to multi-cloud.