Aktion Mensch leverages Microsoft Azure to enhance inclusion efforts in Germany

The obstacles they faced

As Aktion Mensch began to observe increasing digital and mobile usage by its audience, the non-profit wanted to take action to prevent potential obstacles, such as compromised service quality or security exposure. Already facing mounting challenges due to legacy technologies, hosting issues, delays and lack of documentation, Aktion Mensch sought to proactively increase infrastructure scalability and flexibility and reduce costs.

“We saw that more and more people were using online and mobile services, so we decided to search for a strategically suitable platform,” said Johannes Kettern, Head of IT Management, Aktion Mensch. “The complexity of our IT led us to choose the Microsoft® Azure® public cloud and Rackspace Technology® to set up and maintain the platform."

What we achieved together

The migration project resulted in a seamless, successful transition. Aktion Mensch was able to move ten business-critical services, which included lottery services and databases, from on-premises data centers to Azure Application Gateway, centralizing applications in one unified gateway. The company integrated Azure Kubernetes Cluster, Azure Container Registry and Azure Application Gateway to achieve significant cost savings compared to an on-premises fixed cost package. Using effective Azure Cloud Cost Management tooling allowed for a significant cost reduction.

Thanks to Microsoft Azure, Aktion Mensch benefits from faster processing times and more flexibility and can concentrate on its core business.

“We have achieved faster results delivering the platform with our predefined landing zones, and gained transparency which helps in terms of security, as well as transparency of costs with the help of Microsoft Azure cost management,” said Kettern.

Thanks to the success of the project, Aktion Mensch has been able to expand further, investigating topics such as IT security. Rackspace has helped them at every step of their cloud journey.

"We had the aim of improving service quality, security, scalability, flexibility and cost reduction and were able to deliver a successful project with the help of the Rackspace team's cutting-edge innovation, expertise and work ethic," said Kettern. “We are extremely satisfied with Rackspace, their work, and especially the team's great experience and knowledge. They have been incredibly helpful, always trying to understand and address our problems to deliver the best possible solutions.”