Cloud-Based Application Center Spurs Innovation for Fonecta

Fonecta is a digital media company based in Finland that provides extensive directory and search services to four million consumers and more than 10,000 businesses around the world. It provisions search capabilities through physical media, online, and mobile devices, regardless of time and place. Examples of services include 020202 directory assistance, eniro.fi, finder.fi, and fonecta.fi/haku (enriched Google search). Fonecta also offers businesses and organizations a wide variety of marketing services that include customer databases, customer base analysis, and marketing campaigns online or through mobile devices. Fonecta is part of the European Directories Group, which has business operations in eight European countries. In 2011, Fonecta’s revenue was €193 million.

A digital evolution
The digital revolution has embraced and transformed the media industry. During this time, Fonecta has evolved into a real-time online media company. To facilitate this change, the company acquired several businesses in the Finnish online and mobile industries. This change naturally put a strain on Fonecta’s IT department. Suddenly there was a patchwork of IT systems and applications from the combined assets of the original and newly acquired businesses. This sprawling infrastructure needed a more holistic and centralized approach to IT architecture that could integrate and manage a variety of systems and applications. This would help Fonecta structure and channel unique data from different applications to a host of new online and mobile services. The company also predicted cost savings with a centralized IT architecture, including reduced TCO from running its own IT systems and applications, doing away with over lapping systems, and using computing resources more efficiently.

An application integration hub in the cloud
To achieve an overhaul of IT systems and create a more holistic architecture, Fonecta decided to evaluate a cloud platform that could serve as an integration hub for all of its applications and data, as well act as a platform to develop and run both internal and external online services. Fonecta evaluated a number of local and international cloud services available in Finland. In the end, Fonecta selected the Ixonos Elastic Cloud, a cloud platform entirely built on an open source stack of enterprise ready solutions from Red Hat®.

“Ixonos Elastic Cloud was a good technological fit for our growing IT infrastructure, as several of our in-house applications run on Red Hat technologies,” said Mikko Matilainen, director of infrastructure and architecture at Fonecta. “Ixonos is a Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider so we know that we can rely on the Ixonos Elastic Cloud to provide a scalable and secure platform that guarantees interoperability with our on-premise systems.”

The underlying infrastructure behind Ixonos Elastic Cloud is built on Red Hat technology, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware, a complete portfolio to develop, integrate, and deploy applications. In addition, the platform is run in a virtualized environment based on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, a complete virtualization solution for enterprise IT. Lastly, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is deployed as the core operating system platform.

“The certified and supported solutions stack from Red Hat--from virtualization technology to operating system and application engine--is the foundation of the Ixonos Elastic Cloud service,” said Jari Kekkonen, business development director at Ixonos. “It provides the scalability, robustness, and security that is required by demanding and globally deployed online services and applications.”

Initially, Fonecta deployed the Ixonos Elastic Cloud as an integration hub for its diverse IT systems and applications, utilizing JBoss Enterprise Data Services Platform. JBoss Enterprise Data Services integrates data from multiple sources for use by organizations’ applications and business processes.

Fonecta is gradually expanding its use of the Ixonos Elastic Cloud and plans to launch both internal and customer-facing applications on the platform.

Harnessing data resources for online innovation while lowering IT costs
At an early stage, Fonecta realized the instrumental benefits of a cloud-based model to achieve a consolidated IT architecture. By using the Ixonos Elastic Cloud as an integration hub for all of its applications, it made data more accessible to other systems and new online services built on the cloud platform.

“Our acquisitions came with vast data resources that we now could aggregate for new online products and services that target both consumers and businesses,” said Matilainen. “ Ixonos Elastic Cloud and the underlying JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio allowed us to easily integrate new online services with our existing applications. This substantially reduces the time it takes us to transform ideas into applications and launch new services.”

The use of the Ixonos Elastic Cloud led to cost savings when compared to a traditional hosting model, as computing resources are utilized and paid for on demand. This means Fonecta could expect high resource utilization without over-investment in computing resources. Reduced TCO for applications was another effect of deploying a cloud model, as the existing IT infrastructure could be used more efficiently and did not need to additional hardware or software investments to launch new services.

Fonecta is planning to migrate additional applications to Ixonos Elastic Cloud, and will continue to roll out new mobile and traditional web services, including tailor-made applications for its business customers that utilize data resources from its existing application base. The company expects to further save time on deploying and managing these new online applications through the Ixonos Elastic Cloud self-service portal, which will enable cloud customers to create their own virtual machines to run applications in the cloud.