Cisco Cisco Server Provisioner Information Guide

Page of 3
Challenge 
Swisscom AG is the largest telecommunications provider in Switzerland. In addition 
to providing mobile, digital television, and Internet services to millions of private 
residents throughout the country, Swisscom also plans, implements, and operates IT 
and communications infrastructures for businesses of all sizes. 
In recent years, Swisscom has encountered a challenge familiar to telecommunica-
tions companies (telcos) everywhere. As more customers shift from landlines to 
mobile devices, and as the mobile market becomes more competitive and complex, 
many telcos are finding it necessary to create new revenue streams by offering a 
broader range of services. In 2011, Swisscom confronted this challenge with the 
introduction of Dynamic Computing Services, a comprehensive cloud offering de-
signed exclusively for Swiss businesses looking for a secure, scalable, cost-effec-
tive approach to IT. 
Difficulties quickly emerged. “We developed our own customer-facing portal for the 
cloud offering,” says Thomas Gfeller, product manager at Swisscom. “Almost right 
away, we could see that our software had serious limitations. The billing and fulfillment 
processes were insufficiently automated, which resulted in unnecessary operating 
costs. Customers had very little transparency into the management of their cloud data. 
And most importantly, the solution was hard-coded and did not offer the configuration 
flexibility we needed for a rapid time to market of new product features.” 
Many of these difficulties arose from the size and diversity of the Swisscom customer 
base. The company runs four selling organizations, each aimed at a different segment 
of the corporate market, and Swisscom leadership wanted to integrate all of these 
units into a centrally managed cloud solution. “For years, each selling unit had its own 
IT lifecycle,” says Adrian Flückiger, head of cloud infrastructure services corporate 
business at Swisscom. “That creates a great deal of unnecessary overhead. To make 
our cloud offering scalable and keep it affordable for our business customers, we 
needed to extend our IT capabilities across multiple front units.”
© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 1 of 3
Customer Case Study
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Customer Name:
 Swisscom AG
Industry:
 Telecommunications and  
IT service provider
Location:
 Worblaufen, Switzerland 
Number of Employees:
 19,500
Challenge:
• Automate billing and fulfillment 
processes in customer-facing cloud 
portal
• Extend unified cloud capabilities 
across multiple business units
• Meet stringent security requirements 
for business-ready cloud solution
Solution:
• Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 
for on-demand cloud-based workload 
deployment
• VMware vCloud Director to provision 
virtual data centers almost instantly
• Cisco Services to optimize solution for 
full integration of Cisco software and 
legacy hardware
Results:
• Reduced operational costs by 
provisioning servers in minutes rather 
than weeks
• Scaled to manage fluctuation in user 
demand without increasing IT staff
• Offered more flexible pay-per-use 
billing options to cloud customers