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Customer Story

Xebia's Microsoft Azure Landing Zone: Planting The Seed For An Innovative Future

Enza Zaden enters a long-term partnership with Xebia, leveraging its Microsoft Azure Landing Zone as the foundation for accelerating value delivery and driving innovation.
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Related Services
Microsoft Azure Landing Zone
Xebia Managed Services
DevOps 

Industry
Agriculture

 

 

Enza Zaden — Leading the way in vegetable breeding

Nestled in the northwest of the Netherlands is Enkhuizen, the proud home of Enza Zaden for over 85 years. With a global presence spanning forty-five offices in twenty-five countries and a dedicated team of more than 2.800 people, Enza's focus on taste, appearance, yield, and disease resistance ensures the delivery of exceptional products that cater to the diverse needs of all customers worldwide.
Why
Grant people anywhere in the world access to healthy, varied vegetables
What
Technology that supports business growth
How
Adopt Xebia's Microsoft Azure Landing Zone, plus Xebia Managed Services

Future-Ready Technology

Aware of the growing impact of technology, Enza Zaden defined several ambitions, including: 

  • To increase self-service within Enza Zaden and automation while ensuring security and continuity
  • To expand its business without making a comparable increase in its workforce
  • To capitalize on best practices

As Enza Zaden pursued these goals. Rather than propelling the business forward, the existing platform slowed it down growth and innovation. Following the shared experiences of multiple team members from Enza Zaden, Xebia was called in to present what they believed could remedy Enza Zaden's challenges: a standardized Microsoft Azure Landing Zone, complemented by Xebia Managed Services.

"Setting up our cloud environment properly will support us in the growth of Enza Zaden".

logo enza zaden
Tino Otsen Manager ICT Enza Zaden

Microsoft Azure Landing Zone

 At the start of the collaboration, Xebia Data was developing a data platform for Enza Zaden and was also encountering issues with the existing platform. Xebia's standardized Microsoft Azure Landing Zone proved to be the perfect solution to turn that around. Xebia's landing zone is designed to deliver value quickly. It's a standardized solution, built on a tremendous amount of expertise, rather than a custom solution. This has the advantage that, in terms of implementation, you can get things done very quickly. 

"Where building a custom landing zone can take months or even years, our landing zone was up and running in five weeks." — Marc Bruins, CTO Xebia Microsoft Managed Services

With the landing zone, a solid foundation has been created for Enza Zaden to build workloads upon. It's a platform that grows alongside you, and adding solutions along the way increases its value.

"Enza Zaden asked us to create customized components on top of the landing zone. Following their request, we explored the possibility of offering these components to other users of the landing zone. That's the power of this solution — working together as partners, we constantly innovate and develop new features that enhance the value of the landing zone for all its users."  — Suraj Sewbalak, COO Xebia Microsoft Managed Services

"We were looking to partner with a no-nonsense IT company, true experts who, like us, are willing to put in the hard work and get things done. We have found that partner in Xebia."

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Jordy van Houten Product Owner Cloud

A Comprehensive Package for Long-Term Success

With the implementation of the landing zone, the technical part is covered, but more is needed to maximize technology's potential over a long period of time. So Enza Zaden entered into a partnership with Xebia, with continuous learning and ongoing support at its core. 

Xebia Managed Services offers Enza Zaden the ability to focus on what they do best, knowing they have a team of experts maintaining their IT platform. Bruins: "Our Managed Services solution is one of a kind. We are a team of IT specialists ready to help you day and night. If you have a problem or question, you can easily reach us via Teams or Slack or through your standardized tooling. The person who starts working on your request retains full ownership and can engage colleagues to jointly reach a solution." 

In addition to this, Xebia also offers Enza Zaden training to keep its internal knowledge up to date. Sewbalak: "When we started working together, we recognized that there was room for improvement in Enza Zaden's DevOps practices, indicating an opportunity for knowledge enhancement. We proposed training to elevate the teams' overall understanding of DevOps, with the intention of diving deeper into tailored training programs in the near future.”

Results

After a fruitful six months of working together, we can already list the following results:

  • A successful implementation of our Microsoft Azure Landing Zone. Sewbalak: "We started with one landing zone with one workload, today there are 37 workloads running on it."
  • DevOps enablement, allowing Enza Zaden to deliver business value faster
  • A Managed Services Catalog that very clearly defines who is responsible for what, eliminating gray areas 
  • A stunning booth at Enza Zaden's Innovation & Development fair where we shared our story with the entire organization
  • We worked hand-in-hand with Enza Zaden to draw up its Cloud Strategy and Vision for 2024
  • The kick-off of a solid partnership — we are proud to be Enza Zaden's trusted advisor for all things IT

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