Logicalis

Logicalis-itelligence partnership takes total customer service to a new level in the SMB and midmarket SAP world.

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itelligence Inc. is the leading choice for global SMB and midmarket companies seeking SAP solutions. It provides a broad range of consulting services and customer support options in support of SAP solutions, including implementations, call center, outsourcing and support services. A wholly owned subsidiary of itelligence AG, itelligence is one of only 19 SAP global services partners and one of only 12 SAP global hosting partners.

A unique partnership between itelligence and Logicalis has evolved over many years that allows customers of either company to take advantage of the services of the other. itelligence provides unrivaled SAP expertise and Logicalis provides and supports the complete computing environment. Each company contributes to the services the other company offers its customers.

One of the services itelligence offers, for example, is the implementation of SAP for customers on an infrastructure that itelligence owns and supports. Logicalis first began working with itelligence almost ten years ago as a reseller of hardware and software for these hosted systems.

“Every time itelligence adds a new outsourcing customer, we provide new infrastructure to support it behind the scenes,” says Logicalis Account Executive Sandy Shute. “It could be additional blades, storage, backup solutions; basically helping them architect overall what may be needed for their customer’s SAP implementation. Beyond SAP, the customer may want to have other applications or their email monitored and managed. That’s where our managed services team gets involved. There are many variations to what we can provide together.” 

Leap Forward

The itelligence-Logicalis partnership took a leap forward in 2005 as a way to provide a solution for a Logicalis customer with operations on three continents. New ownership had necessitated the migration of the customer’s primary data center to a new facility and the customer turned to Logicalis for the development of the new data center as well as the managed services to keep it operational. Logicalis had the skills and experience to handle the data center migration and provide managed services. The customer faced the additional challenge, however, of having to upgrade to the latest version of SAP at the same time.

For the SAP part of the total solution, Logicalis enlisted the help of itelligence. Months of working closely together in preparation made the actual migration a non-event. It was completed with the SAP upgrade in place—and without missing a beat—in less than a day and half. The customer was very impressed by what the team of Logicalis and itelligence was able to accomplish.

So was the management of Logicalis and itelligence. The business models of the two companies did not overlap anywhere, but they touched everywhere. It was a perfect synergy that paid dividends for both companies and their respective customers.

Highest Level

“Having the ability to offer services on the SAP-side at the highest level and the non-SAP side through Logicalis at the highest level makes us unique in the SMB, midmarket world,” says itelligence Director of Outsourcing Services Thomas Runge.”

The original success of the itelligence-Logicalis collaboration has been repeated many times over the years in many variations. Sometimes Logicalis brings itelligence into a project and sometimes itelligence brings in Logicalis. Sometimes a customer only wants to deal with one partner, and sometimes a customer wants both partners at the table. Customer have even been able to change which partner they turn to as the lead partner  as their needs change.

Total Solution

“The services that we each offer provide a total solution around the SAP environment,” says Logicalis Business Manager for Managed Service Kevin Clark. “Not just the application, but also the underlying day-to-day management of the infrastructure; even business continuance.”

Clark says Logicalis and itelligence work together to support disaster recovery for one customer at a SunGard facility. “Once a year Logicalis and itelligence pack up and go to the SunGard data center and rebuild this customer’s SAP environment.” Clark says. “We have all the documentation and the SLAs in the event of an actual disaster. That really speaks to the flexible nature of our two companies putting together a total solution for a customer.”

Communications and trust are keys to this successful partnership, says Runge. “By now our operations are highly integrated. Communications works so well that we can provide a seamless delivery of our combined services to the customer.”

itelligence Director of the Outsourcing Line of Business Steve Short calls the itelligence-Logicalis relationship “synergistic.” “We need to take more advantage of it,” he adds. “That’s our next step.”