CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Growth in 70% performance uplift for More efficient absorption of Optimized user experience e-commerce critical product experience peaks and faster web page thanks to faster web page management applications load times load times and better search engine rankings

Global player in e-commerce: premium brand Villeroy &

Villeroy & Boch AG has been a global Boch trusts in innovation and leading ceramics producer for over 270 years. Headquartered in Mettlach, close to Germany’s borders with France and cutting-edge IT infrastructure Luxembourg, the company is a byword for well-designed, high-quality products in the Respected global ceramics producer goes digital: keen to ensure bathroom, wellness and tableware. swift, agile responsiveness around the world and constantly www.villeroy-boch.com committed to top quality, Villeroy & Boch AG has opted to further INDUSTRY expand its digital infrastructure. Supported by the European IT Manufacturing/Retail infrastructure provider OVHcloud, the venerable company is using HEADQUARTERS ™ VMware vSAN to migrate to a VMware hybrid-cloud ready data Mettlach, Germany center. The result? Optimized product experience management and improvements to its entire multichannel product communication. In ABOUT OVHcloud OVHcloud is a global leading European tech this way, Villeroy & Boch has, at a stroke, mastered the challenge group that makes dedicated server, software of surging online demand. With a modernized IT infrastructure now and infrastructure modules available to help developers and businesses manage, protect in place, its customers are happier, sales are heading north, and and scale their data. A global player in its own new markets are being tapped. right, OVH builds its own servers, manages 400.000 servers in 30 data centers on four continents and operates its own fiber-optic network. It serves more than 1.5 million Innovative, international and strong on design – since 1748 customers in more than 130 countries. Villeroy & Boch combines a sense of tradition with a spirit of innovation and stands for class www.ovhcloud.com/de/ and sophistication. Since its foundation in 1748, the company has developed into one of the world’s leading brands in the ceramics industry and at the same time into a lifestyle brand. VMWARE FOOTPRINT The renowned premium brand is headquartered in the picturesque Old Abbey in Mettlach VMware Cloud Foundation™ on the Saar River, close to Germany’s borders with France and Luxembourg. Armed with 14 VMware vSAN™ production facilities across Europe, Asia and the Americas, the company – publicly traded since 1990 – today employs 7,500 people in 125 countries. Villeroy & Boch AG’s core

1 Global player in e-commerce: Premium brand Villeroy & Boch trusts in innovation and cutting-edge IT infrastructure

Efficient data storage for digital asset management “Our aim is to provide content for our sales channels efficiently and as quickly as possible. But we also want consistent high quality and content that is as standardized as it can be,” says Erik Heinen, Team Lead Enterprise , Villeroy & Boch. “The big question for us was how best to unify content from creation through the technology to delivery.” Systems need to advance and improve if quality and speed are to be up to scratch. Understanding the benefits of an OPEX-based IT model as opposed to a CAPEX-based one, Villeroy & Boch opted for a cloud-based model at a very early stage. The ceramics producer first approached OVHcloud back in 2014, recruiting it as a competent IT infrastructure provider to drive its digital transformation and migration to the cloud. OVHcloud is committed to supplying its customers with innovative technologies. “In 2014, we migrated our entire web landscape to the OVHcloud, which runs on a VMware infrastructure,” says Jens Schneider, Senior Web Engineer at Villeroy & Boch. “Back then, the scope was still manageable: twenty virtual machines – from web servers to database servers to load balancers. Since then we have developed an enormous demand for capacity - we are now at 90 VMs.”

“High-quality, first-class content must be business splits into bathroom and wellness and tableware. made available to the various sales Numerous design and innovation awards testify to the continuous development of the premium brand, which today sets channels in a timely and automated new standards in product development and the digitalization of manner. Thanks to a high-performance distribution channels, among other things. infrastructure from OVHcloud and Awareness in tradition in the growing VMware, we are able to manage critical e-commerce space applications more efficiently and deliver Like other companies, Villeroy & Boch is feeling the impact of the general market trend toward e-commerce. It has responded by accurate, complete and consistent setting the goal of refining its digital strategy and capturing more product information.” growth in online business. The relentless increase in online trading worldwide – especially the shift in consumption patterns– ERIK HEINEN creates a need for leading-edge IT solutions. If it is to safeguard TEAM LEAD ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT, its global brand footprint, stay competitive and efficiently master VILLEROY & BOCH the digital transformation, Villeroy & Boch must sharpen its own innovative capabilities, become more flexible and adaptable and cut costs. Since the migration six years ago, the expectations Villeroy & The company must also rise to the challenge of today’s more Boch places on its IT systems – including the hardware – have demanding technical requirements, especially with regard to its risen sharply. To stay ahead of the performance curve, it thus internal product experience management system. The latter became critical to switch to more innovative and more modern combines a product information system (PIM) and a media asset technology. A further milestone was therefore reached when the management system (MAM). Why is all this necessary? As the company migrated to a hybrid-cloud ready data center based on spectrum of providers broadens continually and more and more VMware vSAN in 2020. That underpins our PIM and MAM traffic clogs up websites and e-shops, superior power and systems with the very latest storage technology, giving us performance is a must. At the same time, Villeroy & Boch found significant performance gains thanks to the migration,” Heinen that its hardware too was straining at the limits: modernization notes. “We wanted to migrate with no downtime,” adds Khaled was therefore vital for it to stay on top of growing demands.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY | 2 Global player in e-commerce: Premium brand Villeroy & Boch trusts in innovation and cutting-edge IT infrastructure

Allab, Sales Director Enterprise at the OVH Group. “So we always keep the entire product range fully up to date and keep invested sufficient up-front time in the proof of concept before it available across all channels,” explains Jens Schneider. For efficiently shifting the entire infrastructure – comprising 100 Villeroy & Boch, automating output to the e-commerce terabytes of data storage – in less than twelve hours.” channels is essential: this is the way in which its own web shop is supplied, alongside the Otto Group or . Looking back on so many years of very successful partnership with OVHcloud, Villeroy & Boch did not even consider changing Thanks to OVHcloud and VMware, Villeroy & Boch was able to its provider. “We’ve already been using OVHcloud Enterprise increase its performance significantly and thus achieve a shorter Support for two years. That lets us test new applications in a live time-to-market. “Every stakeholder has benefited from the environment and base investment decisions on the results,” Erik migration,” Heinen affirms. “We now get fewer support inquiries Heinen explains. “Enterprise Support is a must-have, because from the departments, which frees up resources and the total cost of ownership is what ultimately matters.” considerably reduces our management overhead.” The system OVHcloud initially tested the new PIM application in a clone is much more efficient: in e-shops such as Otto and Amazon, environment to explore the best way to implement it in the new customers find relevant product information faster and therefore system. The application is already yielding handsome benefits. have a firmer foundation for their purchase decisions. Heinen is Through this live test, Villeroy & Boch gained a comprehensive pleased: “At the end of the day, that pushes up our revenue. insight into all tools without any unpleasant surprises. This made And responsibility for the infrastructure stays in one pair of it clear to the ceramic producer what advantages the new hands.” technology would bring to the PIM application. “As the first Today, the company is reaping the rewards of lower costs and VMware VCPP (VMware Cloud Provider) partner in Europe, faster times to market for new products. Thanks to innovative OVHcloud gives its customers the opportunity to test latest solutions, the traditional ceramics producer from western VMware technologies. We are pleased to enable Villeroy & Germany has nothing to fear from its global competitors: its Boch’s entry into vSAN technology,” adds Khaled Allab. program of international expansion, focusing on new growth markets, can go ahead. Villeroy & Boch’s global presence and the further development of its brand are assured. Meanwhile, high availability of the services made available on the OVHcloud will continually improve users’ experience.

Equipped for the future: Sense of tradition and technical innovation go hand in hand Going forward, the Mettlach-based ceramics producer plans to develop new applications and implement complete VMware Cloud Foundation stack at the OVHcloud data center. The next steps will move in the direction of network virtualization, centered around VMware NSX®, VMware vRealize® Automation™ and Kubernetes: “We never stop striving to make Lower costs, better performance, 70% uplift our IT architecture even better so that we can better absorb The decision to follow a data center modernization strategy on peaks and outages alike,” Heinen says. “The very positive the basis of vSAN paved the way to a 70-percent performance cooperation we have enjoyed with OVH and VMware over many uplift for critical product experience management applications years has demonstrated how successfully we can adapt our – a crucial step toward optimizing the whole web landscape business model to vital technological advances and changing architecture. “All our e-commerce revenue depends on high- market conditions.” quality, first-class content, especially the PIM system,” Heinen says. “The new hardware delivers much better performance and lets us control critical applications more efficiently.” At Villeroy & Boch, any outage across critical systems and web applications would immediately equate to a loss of revenue. Content 4.0: Ceramics producer Erik Heinen and his team of six staff manage all the enterprise content management systems in the OVHcloud. That includes @VilleroyandBoch is optimizing its digital the PIM, which guarantees the availability of products across asset management and boosting its every channel. Briefly put, information from Product e-commerce performance with the new Development goes into the ERP system, where it is enriched by @VMware vSAN storage technology via master and logistical data and forwarded to the PIM system. @OVHcloud. # #performance Supplemented by content marketing information, it is then output to the various online and offline channels. “The issue is to #uplift

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