TVH

TVH, Group Thermote & Vanhalst, is the one-stop-shop for industrial vehicles and consists of 2 business units: TVH Parts & TVH Equipment. Worldwide, about 5,500 people work there, from Auckland to Vancouver. The IT department has approximately 150 employees.

From this worldwide activity it is of course very important that people are also helped at night, or at least during the Belgian night. To achieve this, it was important to strengthen TVH with a partner that could offer this, confirms Frederik Clement, Group ICT Infrastructure Manager. There was a need for 24/7 support in connection with the business-critical systems. “This was absolutely necessary if problems arise that we cannot solve ourselves or, for example, in the absence of one of the colleagues.” Frederik adds. Today, that support runs through Kangarun, Kangaroot's managed service for open source infrastructure.

Why Kangaroot?

In his search, Frederik met various parties who had knowledge of Linux. “We've met the people from Kangaroot at an event and we noticed that the expertise was really there. Not in one person but in teams, in the entire company and for us that was a perfect match.” Frederik Clement testifies.

What is very important to us when choosing a partner is flexibility. We don't have 10 Linux administrators in-house here all the time. On the other hand, we do want to be able to deploy extra capacity via our partner, if necessary.

That flexibility, a team behind every engagement instead of a single point of failure, with capacity that scales up when TVH needs it; is exactly what Kangarun is built to deliver.

From project work to managed operations

First of all, a standardization & virtualization exercise was started, laying the groundwork for a more consistent Linux environment across TVH's infrastructure. Concrete examples of the ongoing collaboration include TVH's observability setup and an automation upgrade currently underway with Ansible. "These are both typical projects that actually take up quite a lot of time that we can't always spend ourselves. That is where we find the perfect collaboration with Kangaroot," Frederik adds.

Open Source at TVH

Tom Desmet, ICT Solution Architect, explains: “Kangaroot helps us with our operational processes, but also with the realisation of projects with open source technologies. Open source systems are usually supported by a strong community, there is a lot of innovation happening within those communities, you have a lot of flexibility and open source systems are slightly safer because there is full insight into the code.” It's that combination, project work and day-to-day operations under one roof; that today sits at the core of Kangarun's managed approach."

24/7 managed support

Initially, TVH started with an 'office hours' support contract. At the time, a fully managed 24/7 service didn't yet exist at Kangaroot, but as TVH's needs grew, so did the offering & the collaboration expanded into what is now Kangarun's managed 24/7 support.

Because that knowledge is and remains present at Kangaroot, they can help us at all times, day and night.

confirms Frederick. “Soon the Americans will also go live on our ERP system. So the after-hours support almost becomes more important than the within-hours support.”

“Due to TVH's growth, including through acquisitions, there are often integration projects that are prioritized internally. In order to be able to complete the IT projects in a reasonable period of time, we certainly need external parties to assist us. And Kangaroot plays the perfect role there!” concludes Frederik Clement.

Technology

• Ansible
• PostgreSQL
• Zabbix
• Kangarun