Ahoy to adventure!
Behind the scenes of floating cities
Cruise ships are small floating cities and represent a real place of longing for many. Guests expect an all-round service - stores, cafés, restaurants, clubs and entertainment. This requires efficient management in the background, be it for booking wellness treatments or security on board.
The IT infrastructure, which must be absolutely reliable at sea, forms an essential basis for this. Enormous personnel and material resources are required for the perfect cruise experience, and the shipping companies work with numerous partners to ensure that everything runs smoothly.
One of them is sea chefs. We are one of the world's leading partners for cruise lines and tour operators. Our processes cover everything that shipping companies need for satisfied passengers: from design and planning, logistics and implementation to crew management and day-to-day operations.
Anyone operating in a global industry must also have an international presence. sea chefs has six offices in Europe: two in Germany, two in Switzerland and one each in Cyprus and Malta. Enterprise applications and sensitive information are shared at these locations, including payroll data and legal documents.
Fighting against the current
Previously, sea chefs used expensive VPN connections via the public Internet. However, this network was prone to errors, frequent outages and high latency, especially on the main route between Cyprus and the rest of Europe. There were no centralized resources, so each location had its own server farm, which was expensive to operate and maintain. When problems arose, technicians had to travel to the site, which of course meant costs and downtime.
A new solution was needed, and the wish list was long:
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a more stable and reliable network
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greater scalability of storage and computing power
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less hardware on site
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uncomplicated server management
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a partner to take care of the configuration and operation of the international network so that we have more time for our customers
In search of a solution to these requirements, the team turned to new approaches - and a new partnership with RIEDEL Networks.
Charting a new course with a faster, more efficient network
We said goodbye to our traditional on-premise hardware and opted for virtual servers in a centralized Microsoft Azure cloud instead. We then replaced our VPN setup with a dedicated MPLS network built and managed by RIEDEL Networks.
This MPLS network runs over a private infrastructure. Thanks to modern packet forwarding, latency times are reduced and speed is increased. Time-critical requests are given priority, signals are rerouted in the event of connection problems and different types of traffic are combined for more efficient routing. And best of all, RIEDEL Networks took over the operation and management completely, so we were able to say goodbye to the tedious work of maintaining and securing the network.
RIEDEL Networks also provides the backup infrastructure that takes over within a few milliseconds if the primary network should fail - which has only happened a few times in the past three years (and was mainly related to Azure). The backup process is completely transparent to our internal IT team and our colleagues can continue to write and receive emails and use our enterprise applications without any disruption. Network issues that used to cause business downtime now leave us completely unaffected.
„Because of our backup infrastructure from RIEDEL Networks, network issues that once took our operations offline have no impact on our activities.”
Because our MPLS is separate from the normal Internet, disruptions to the public infrastructure have no impact on us. For example, a few years ago, a fiber optic cable was accidentally severed at a construction site in Hamburg, cutting off parts of the city from the Internet. With our old VPN architecture, we would also have been offline. Instead, we were able to continue working without any problems.
Riding the waves of dramatic improvements
Thanks to RIEDEL Networks' MPLS service, our access speed has improved dramatically, thanks to the efficient connection of our European sites to our central Microsoft Azure cloud-based data center. Working with online files and applications works just as fast and well as if they were local, with virtually no delay. In particular, our communication with Cyprus has been significantly accelerated, despite the long distance and dependence on a submarine cable, as we are now freed from the challenges of a VPN network.
„Outsourcing network management to RIEDEL Networks also takes the pressure off our IT teams. We can serve our crewing team, procurement department, and other internal services instead of spending time monitoring, configuring, and optimizing our network.”
We have full confidence in RIEDEL Networks, not only as a service provider, but also as a technology partner. For example, if we take the routers at our sites offline to update the firmware or replace a faulty cable, we let RIEDEL Networks know in advance, otherwise the team would contact us as soon as a device disappears from the network to make sure there is no fault. This rapid response to problems provides peace of mind.
Outsourcing network management to RIEDEL Networks has taken a lot of pressure off our IT teams. We have more time for our crews, for procurement and for other internal services, as we no longer have to spend time monitoring, configuring and optimizing our network.
Smooth sailing ahead
The MPLS technology from RIEDEL Networks, together with the cloud-based Microsoft Azure servers, has contributed significantly to the standardization and optimization of the IT infrastructure at sea chefs. Thanks to fast private connections, we are now immune to public Internet outages and at the same time save on exorbitant VPN license costs. Our central virtual servers are scalable, upgradeable and immediately available to all employees throughout Europe.
We have increased efficiency and expanded our capacity so that we can support our cruise partners in delivering outstanding experiences today and in the future.
