Deloitte and Elmec Informatica launch a partnership to bring the cloud to Italian companies

The current economic situation has accelerated the need for flexible solutions that guarantee remote working and access to services and data at any time. In this challenging scenario, Deloitte and Elmec have announced the launch of a partnership, to provide businesses with a full range of services to evolve with the cloud and secure a managed solution that reduces complexity and maximises benefits.

In today’s environment, businesses are faced with a number of priorities: to adopt technologies for remote working, that guarantee security of data and of operations; to use scalable cloud services and thus avoid the costs of purchasing and managing hardware in the company; to reduce waste due to unused services and facilities. With cloud services, it is possible to optimise resources with flexible pricing models and to ensure the best technology and provide greater protection for their data, by means of cybersecurity solutions and backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Thanks to the demand for these services, the cloud market in Italy grew by 21% between 2016 and 2020, according to the Cloud Transformation Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano. Even in 2020, the growth rate remained unchanged and was driven by the adoption of public and hybrid cloud services (+30%). More than 50% of companies plan to change over to a hybrid cloud/on-premise model, and already more than 66% of them rely on external providers to manage their IT systems. This suggests that transition strategy consulting and the implementation and development of these strategies will prove to be two decisive areas for market development in the coming years.

The agreement between Deloitte and Elmec seeks to generate a structured offer in these two areas, to enable companies to have a reliable technology player to whom they can delegate the management of their IT services, in order to minimise the complexity and focus their energies on innovation.

The offer that comes from this collaboration is dedicated, in particular, to large companies which have always characterised Italian production. The most important sectors include: automotive, retail, manufacturing, food, pharmaceutical and logistics.

Deloitte has always provided up-to-date multidisciplinary expertise in the digital and technology fields. In the cloud sector, Deloitte provides an end-to-end service to help companies achieve their technology and business objectives. Thanks to 500 cloud and cybersecurity professionals in 3 countries (Italy, Greece and Malta), Deloitte has operated for 5 years in the world of cloud native products, guaranteeing in-depth knowledge of the sector and of the market and a holistic approach that ranges from cloud governance (that is, defining business strategies based on the cloud) to strategy (defining secure and reliable paths for migration to the cloud), to security and operating models (evolution of corporate structures to achieve efficiency and security on the cloud).

Elmec Informatica, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2021, will integrate Deloitte’s consulting and strategy input, with its experience in developing the most appropriate private and public cloud infrastructure and the technical expertise of its specialist teams. In particular, it will provide end-to-end support for managed services such as cloud operations, backups and disaster recovery, to guarantee security and computing power for a company’s systems and business applications. It will also have more than 420 specialised technicians (about 70% of its 600 employees) and a 24/7 support service. It will have an agile and hybrid approach with cloud or more traditional architectures and will be one of the main Italian players in the world of IBM i (ex AS/400) systems.

“The partnership between Deloitte and Elmec is greater than the sum of its parts. Two historic companies whose combined skills don’t just add together, but multiply, and thereby, expand the possibilities for all Italian companies that wish to innovate with the cloud,” said Michele Paolin, Cloud Migration and Managed Services Leader at Deloitte Consulting. “Elmec and Deloitte each have a long history of successes and achievements. This is the best guarantee for our clients, who are primarily looking for secure and reliable partners to whom they can entrust the migration of their systems. Deloitte has a unique approach to the cloud; the breadth and depth of our expertise, combined with our Italian and international networks, enables us to address the cloud in a comprehensive manner, considering both the technological aspects and those relating to organisational changes, to the new operating model, to impacts, from an accounting and tax point of view and cybersecurity. This offer is now even more complete, thanks to Elmec’s reliability and expertise in cloud operations, which complement and enhance the cloud management skills that Deloitte offers its clients in Italy and around the world.”

“Over the course of our 50-year history, we’ve helped small Italian multinationals in a variety of sectors (from food to fashion, from design to manufacturing) to adopt the right technology infrastructure to increase their range of products and services in Italy and abroad. Thanks to this strategic collaboration with Deloitte, we intend to offer all of our experience to the market segment of medium-large companies that need to address the transition to the cloud while maintaining control over their resources and entrusting us with managing complexities and critical issues,” said Rinaldo Ballerio, President of Elmec Informatica. “We’re ready for this new challenge, with more than 420 specialised technicians, our Tier IV data centre, which offers more than 300 companies business application protection and management, and our collaboration with the main players in the public cloud, such as Amazon Web Services. Over the years, we’ve acquired a wealth of expertise that enables us to continue to innovate, in order to provide businesses with the best possible approach to digitisation.”

The partnership is proving to be a winning asset for all midmarket companies that have to face, for example, a process of migration of their business applications to more powerful platforms or completely re-engineered solutions, because it enables companies to be followed step by step in this process by Deloitte experts and to take advantage of the expertise and technology of Elmec professionals, to set up IT architectures that can support this transition, while ensuring business continuity and data security.

The services provided by Deloitte and Elmec:

Infrastructure assessment

Financial and accounting assessment of data centre and IT asset divestment

Licensing management

Industry 4.0 tax incentive management

Infrastructure planning & migration

Cost analysis and optimisation

Legacy system migration

Cloud managed services and proactive monitoring

24/7 technical support

Cloud managed backup

Business continuity and disaster recovery

The project for a client in the food sector

The partnership between Deloitte and Elmec has already demonstrated how effective it is in the development of a project for a large Italian company in the food sector. This company decided to start a programme of digitisation, to better manage the increase in the demand for their confectionery products and the resulting impact on workloads and on the IT system.

The development of a cloud infrastructure had to take a number of needs into account: it had to be scalable in accordance with the increased volume of activities; it had to manage vast amounts of data from the IoT devices and make their use efficient, while at the same time ensuring continuity of the business processes every day, 24/7.

To achieve these goals, Deloitte proposed, designed and created the migration of the client’s infrastructure to an SAP S/4 Hana solution, that combines intelligent technologies in a single product, including AI, machine learning and advanced analysis, transforming the company into a genuine digital enterprise.

 

The design produced by Deloitte was completed perfectly by Elmec, who created a hybrid-cloud system that uses its Tier IV data centre to guarantee the availability and provision continuity of the business mission critical applications, even during the migration process. All this enables the client to develop its IT system, without any impact on its business. The new solution provides real-time data on the entire production chain and a simplified management of peak workloads, and the support of an external data centre ensures lower costs and greater security. Thanks to the integration of the production data with sales and client data, the company can identify new opportunities for its confectionery products.

 

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DELOITTE

Deloitte is one of the largest companies that provide professional services to companies in Italy. Our approximately 7700 professionals help 8000 online clients to achieve excellence thanks to the high quality of the service provided, to our multidisciplinary approach and to our presence throughout the country. Thanks to a network of companies in over 150 countries, Deloitte can make use of international expertise and in-depth knowledge of the local territory, to help clients to achieve their business goals. Our 312,000 professionals all over the world are united by a culture that promotes integrity, constant attention to the market and to clients, commitment to colleagues and appreciation of differences.

www.deloitte.it

ELMEC INFORMATICA

With its 600 employees, a turnover of €111 million (revenues increased by 2.5% in 2020), and 10 offices in Italy, including Varese, Brescia, Parma and Padua, and one in Switzerland, Elmec Informatica SpA is a provider of managed IT services and solutions for companies, and offers international coverage in over 100 countries. Founded in 1971 by Clemente Ballerio and Cesare Corti, as a data-processing company, today, this Italian provider, which has been described by Forbes as one of the top 50 companies for digitisation in Italy, implements innovative projects that improve companies’ IT processes: from supply and services for devices, to system management in private and public clouds and networking.

www.elmec.com

 

Translated by Bonanomi Vittoria, Graziani Edoardo, Mura Denise, Perinelli Giorgia

Reviewed by Prof. Rolf Cook