CPL Concordia’s digital transformation journey

The client

CPL Concordia is a renowned production and work cooperative society, established in 1899 in Concordia, Modena, Italy. With a rich history spanning over 125 years, CPL has evolved from a cooperative of labourers focused on canal reclamation to a leading entity in the energy sector. Today, CPL boasts a production value of nearly 400 million euros, operates 11 offices across major Italian cities, and maintains an office in Romania. The group employs over 1,800 people, including 670 cooperative members. 

CPL's core activities are centered around energy management, offering services such as global energy management, gas distribution network services, LNG plant construction, cogeneration, public lighting, and water plant management and remote control. The company is also at the forefront of the energy transition, with significant investments in renewable energy projects, including hydrogen, biomethane, and photovoltaic plants. 

For over a century, CPL Concordia has been a vital reference point for its territory, continuously driving innovation and technological advancement in the energy sector.  

CPL Concordia's initial barriers

CPL strongly believes in innovation and technology. The pursuit of a virtualisation strategy that fosters innovation while ensuring compliance and delivering high-quality services to both public and private clients prompted the search for a technology partner. To respond quickly to the changes imposed by an increasingly dynamic market, the move to the cloud was increasingly urgent. The company needed greater flexibility and speed in its IT services, scalability of resources and optimisation of operating costs. 

CPL Concordia collaborating with SoftwareOne for migrating to the cloud

The collaboration with SoftwareOne was essential to migrate to the cloud to meet their digital transformation challenges. CPL needed a partner who could support its cloud journey, has extensive knowledge and experience in the multicloud world and licensing to cover all critical areas of this operation.  

After several workshops and infrastructure assessments, SoftwareOne identified and shared their advice on using the Azure VMware Solution (AVS).  

The choice of AVS enabled CPL to achieve two concrete benefits:  

• Maintaining business continuity: No downtime was required, enabling a rapid and secure workload migration. This was achieved by using the same networking, limiting the movement of machines to a simple vMotion. The migration was safe as it did not require modification of existing workloads, reducing the risk of technical issues.  
• Maximisation of existing investments: The customer was able to utilise the skills and expertise already present in its IT team. This phased strategy allowed CPL to benefit immediately from the potential of the cloud while preparing its infrastructure and team for a more advanced evolution.

The roadmap was divided into several phases, each with specific objectives:

• Azure VMware Solutions to move production workloads. This allowed CPL Concordia to maintain and increase the skills and expertise of its IT team, significantly accelerating the move to the cloud.
• Cloud Essentials for Azure. CSP contracts were used to manage Cloud spending through SoftwareOne's Client Portal. This ensured effective cost and resource management.
• Training and modernisation. When executing the project, our joint work enabled us to provide the necessary training to CPL Concordia staff and plan the transition to native Cloud solutions and application modernisation.
• Ongoing support. SoftwareOne has provided and is providing ongoing support during the design, implementation and migration phases, ensuring that all the client's needs are met and that any problems are resolved promptly.

To support CPL Concordia in its digital transformation, SoftwareOne provided a comprehensive range of services and customised solutions. 

• Microsoft EA (Enterprise Agreement): This contract enabled CPL Concordia to obtain Microsoft software licences at the best market prices. It included the flexibility to add new products and services during the contract period, ensuring scalability and adaptability. 
• Cloud Managed Services Essentials for Azure: This is our Microsoft CSP service for Azure that simplifies the purchase of licenses, migration and management of workloads on Azure. It provides support and consultancy to optimise the use of Azure resources and enables Concordia to add or remove services according to business needs. 
• SLM MAS Activity (Software Lifecycle Management - Microsoft Advisory Services): Managed by SoftwareOne, this service allows CPL Concordia to oversee the entire software lifecycle, from planning and acquiring licences to managing and optimising software resources.