Short client profile
Lexholding Zrt. is a leading Hungarian-owned group of companies in the Hungarian economy, which includes companies such as BÁV Auction house and Pledge Credit Zrt., Inforg Zrt., Pannon Online Media Kft., LEET Gaming Kft., and also owns shares in, for example, Főtaxi Zrt.
Short IT manager profile
Gábor Kakas has been working for the Group since 2019, first as Head of the Operations and Development Group and then as CIO since November 2020. Previously, he held IT management positions in the banking sector and fintech, so he is familiar with the operation of both small and large companies. He is a LEAN practitioner, working in agile teams, leading projects both abroad and at home.
The business problem
Lexholding Zrt. is an umbrella company, which being a holding company, combines the operations of several jointly owned enterprises. The IT team of 25 people is responsible for providing IT services as Shared Service Centers (SSC) to member companies in different industries, which are billed to them in a fully transparent manner. To provide IT services, the team is supported by other partners who can offer a similar level of transparency and expertise as their in-house colleagues. We have been partners in this interesting task for decades, earning the trust of the IT manager who has changed over time.
The most recent business issue that Lexholding approached Andrews with was the network consolidation that is taking place across all of its member companies. Different member companies had separate, proprietary network solutions that, let’s face it, were impossible to run economically.
One of the subsidiaries, BÁV Auction House, was the starting point for the cooperation. Our active backup ALF firewall clusters and underlying services had been in place for a long time at this company. For network consolidation across the other affiliates, our experts developed the network consolidation process from there, taking into account the high-quality professional standards at Andrews. For each company, we implemented the consolidation based on these standards, with a focus on individual needs and the integrity of business services.
Along with the network consolidation came a technology upgrade that required moving servers, whether physical or virtual, behind Andrews’ firewalls.
“Andrews’ experts in network consultancy services have gone beyond operational issues to bring an architect-type, design engineer competency to network consolidation projects,” says Gábor Kakas, IT Manager at Lexholding. This meant that we helped to think through and design the networks that were to be implemented, taking into account the IT security guidelines that we represented.
“In addition to their contracted operational tasks, they also bring design competence. As Andrews is staffed by highly qualified engineers, it’s definitely worth listening to what they have to say. And if they ask us a question, you have to find the answer, otherwise you’re going to have a problem,” sums up Lexholding’s IT manager.
A textbook example of knowledge transfer
During the network consolidation collaboration, it emerged that Lexholding was preparing a containerization project. A new core system had been implemented at BÁV and its running environment was a Kubernetes-based containerization environment, for which they also relied on our expertise in the design, implementation, operation and delivery.
In IT, vendor dependency is a huge problem, where the whole company depends on the solutions of one vendor. The IT operators at Lexholding therefore like to share tasks within the team and also between external partners. This collaboration results in documentation and knowledge transfer that counteracts vendor dependency.
The Kubernetes containerization project is a textbook example of knowledge transfer: our experts defined the settings and parameters of the containerization layer in consultation with the development company. After the design, we also taught Lexholding’s experts how to operate the new system and prepared the necessary documentation, so that they could operate it independent of us.
Sounds familiar?
If this issue is already present in the life of your company, we are here to help.
Gábor Kakas, IT Manager
Lexholding Zrt.
“Besides their contracted operational tasks, they also bring design competence. As Andrews has highly qualified engineers, it's worth listening to what they say. And if they ask us a question, we have to find the answer, otherwise, it will be a problem.”
