Report: Complete IT operation for a medium-sized mechanical engineering company
The customer is a medium-sized company in the mechanical engineering sector with around 400 employees in the Hamburg area. The internal IT department consists of three people and operates a hybrid IT landscape that is primarily on-premise, but already uses initial cloud components such as Microsoft 365 and Azure. As issues such as IT availability, security and further development are becoming increasingly important, the company opted for a managed services model in collaboration with PROTOS Technologie GmbH.
Initial situation and challenges
From the management’s perspective
Before working with PROTOS, IT operations were heavily focused on internal resources, resulting in bottlenecks in day-to-day support and strategic IT initiatives. There was an increasing lack of resources for all IT matters – particularly with regard to topics such as cloud technologies, business continuity and IT security. After a direct supplier was hacked, the management also recognized its own risk of such attacks. Backup and recovery processes therefore needed to be adapted promptly and measures for active cyber defense urgently supplemented.
Objectives:
- Ensuring regular data backups and protection against cyber attacks
- Continuity of business operations in the event of a crisis or disruption
- Further development and future-proofing of IT
From the perspective of IT management
The internal IT department was working at full capacity and was unable to focus on strategic projects. There was a lack of standardized processes for monitoring, backup and security as well as modern tools for implementing and managing the hybrid IT infrastructure. The support workload increased continuously without any additional capacity being built up. This also repeatedly led to overtime in the team.
Objectives:
- Introduction of a central monitoring system for the early detection of faults
- Creation of scalable application environments
- Focus on core IT processes (e.g. business requirements, process consulting)
- Handover of basic operations to an external, reliable service provider
- Implementation of a hybrid IT infrastructure environment through the use of public and private cloud providers
The path to the selection of PROTOS Managed Services
The decision in favor of PROTOS Technologie GmbH was made in close cooperation between the management and IT management. The basis was a multi-stage selection process based on a profound analysis of the current situation and clear objectives.
Important decision factors:
- Holistic service model that covers both operational tasks and strategic consulting.
- Transparent SLAs and a comprehensive security concept.
- New employees take longer to familiarize themselves with the company.
- Knowledge is lost when employees leave.
- Handovers and delegations do not work.
- Silos develop, including bottlenecks.
The result? Frustration in the team and with the customer, high staff turnover, missed targets – and ultimately: rising costs, loss of time and quality & safety risks.
Alignment factor
The IT management was convinced by the argument of reducing the workload and professionalizing IT operations, while the management was convinced by clear statements on reliability, data protection and future viability. The structured consulting process from PROTOS and the possibility of a proof of concept further cemented the decision.
Solutions already implemented with PROTOS
Cybersecurity – trust through comprehensive security measures
After a critical security incident at a supplier, the company recognized the urgency of a significantly improved IT security strategy. PROTOS implemented a comprehensive, customized security package, including quarterly security reporting. Regular employee training sessions are held as live webinars twice every six months for around 100 employees. In addition, special services such as Safe Links and Safe Attachments have been set up in M365 to proactively detect phishing and malware. Within one year up to Q1 2025, around 6,250 phishing attempts and around 1,760 blocked malware attachments were detected. In addition, the entire office IT was comprehensively secured with conditional access and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Malfunction management – proactive partnership for reliability
In the past, critical events such as an inaccessible MS SQL database have repeatedly had a significant impact on productivity. The time required for internal IT to recover was considerable. PROTOS TecOps takes over the infrastructure support and restores the ability to work as quickly as possible in the event of future disruptions. To preventively minimize future outages, PROTOS established a comprehensive monitoring system that detects potential faults at an early stage and rectifies them before they lead to critical outages. From 93 infrastructure-related tickets in the previous year, the PROTOS team reduced the volume by almost 61% to 36 tickets in the following year. This approach has already avoided several major outages that would have cost the customer a lot of time in the old setup.
Introduction of new tools – partnership-based support for the digital future
The company previously communicated primarily via Exchange and a traditional telephone system. PROTOS acted as a reliable partner to support the switch to Microsoft 365, in particular Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive and Microsoft Teams. This transition now enables the 85 users in the company’s office area to communicate via chat and cloud telephony, for example, as well as file storage via SharePoint/OneDrive, regardless of their location and device. PROTOS provided comprehensive support during the four-week migration and rollout and remains a reliable M365 partner at the company’s side.
Benefits and advantages of working in partnership
The collaboration with PROTOS Technologie GmbH has brought the company added value on several levels – both operationally and strategically. This is due in particular to the partnership-based and proactive approach of both companies.
Operational advantages:
- Stable IT infrastructure with 24/7 monitoring and proactive fault management that reduces the risk of serious disruptions.
- Significant relief for the internal IT department – overtime is a thing of the past.
- Standardized backup and security processes including quarterly reporting.
- Smooth support thanks to a central ticket system and fixed contact persons, so that 90% of inquiries are resolved on the day they are created.
- 1st level support requests were reduced from 220 to 60-80 within a month through automation thanks to the use of AI and the connection of an internal wiki.
- New projects are implemented, tested and put into operation by PROTOS – all from a single source.
The customer’s IT team can now concentrate on the real IT levers again instead of just reacting.
„Our aim is not just to take over our customers’ IT infrastructure, but to actively develop it further. Through standardized processes, a central monitoring system and proactive security measures, we create a reliable IT basis on which the company can operate securely and sustainably. This turns daily IT firefighting into stable operations with room for innovation,” says Jan Reimers, Head of Managed Services at PROTOS.
Strategic advantages:
- Increased employee satisfaction of the internal IT team through relief and focus on growth topics.
- Security and compliance up to date in the long term and sustainably.
- Plannable further development of IT (e.g. targeted cloud transformation).
- Better interaction between IT and business strategy.
- Training courses and knowledge transfer for long-term skills development within the company.
Business planning and long-term security are now much easier to achieve again, as day-to-day IT operations are in safe hands.
„We don’t see IT as mere infrastructure, but as a strategic driver for sustainable growth. That’s why we start with our customers exactly where they often have the most problems on a day-to-day basis – with cybersecurity, fault management and the introduction of new tools. Our aim is not just to solve problems, but to work with our customers to shape the path to a more resilient, more flexible and more intelligent IT future – as a reliable partner at eye level,” says Karsten Quellec, CTO at PROTOS.
Find out more about our managed services on our focus page.
Do you have any questions about our Managed Services and our report?
