SoftwareOne case study

How Grundfos is fueling water sustainability with Azure Kubernetes and SoftwareOne

Water sustainability is a global challenge, but one manufacturing giant is leading the way in using the latest technology to make a difference. Learn how Azure-based solutions delivered by SoftwareOne in partnership with Microsoft are helping Grundfos reduce water consumption, improve water quality, and protect water resources.

In a world where water scarcity is a dire threat, Grundfos, a Danish manufacturing leader, is stepping up to the challenge. With 785 million people lacking nearby access to clean water, Grundfos' innovation is a source of hope for the future.

The company is collaborating with Microsoft and SoftwareOne to leverage Azure Kubernetes Services and other technologies to advance water sustainability. This partnership is helping Grundfos to develop new solutions that can help to reduce water consumption, improve water quality, and protect water resources.

Faster
development and deployment of scalable and reliable applications with Azure Kubernetes
Better
and more sustainability-driving solutions and products to tackle global water challenges
Optimised
performance and cost by using open source components from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)

Client: Grundfos
Industry: Manufacturing
Platform: Azure Cloud
Services: Application Services incl. Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure DevOps

Making a difference

Grundfos is a Danish company established in 1945 as a manufacturer of water pumps. Today, the organisation comprises 100 companies in 60 countries and employs nearly 20,000 people. Through a culture of innovation and sustainability, Grundfos works tirelessly to protect water resources around the world and contribute to the protection of our planet.

Water is one of the world's most precious resources. Today, 785 million people do not have basic access to water within a 30-minute walk from their homes. Ensuring that everyone has access to safe, managed drinking water is an immensely important goal. But it is also a huge challenge. One that Grundfos is not shying away from.

Scaling up

Grundfos is a global leader in water technology, focused on developing innovative solutions to help customers save natural resources and reduce their climate impact.

In a fast-paced world, Grundfos needs to be able to quickly and efficiently validate and test new ideas. To meet this need, the company has built a state-of-the-art Innovation Centre, where multiple teams develop commercial, domestic, district energy, and water utility applications for customers around the world. One example is “Commercial Wastewater” – an application that helps to improve water efficiency and reduce energy consumption in cities.

Given the size and complexity of the organisation, Grundfos needed an enterprise-scale development platform that could handle heavy and highly variable loads without sacrificing availability or cost control. The company also needed a single deployment framework to ensure compliance with security standards and company policies at scale.

With the goal of gaining a highly scalable application infrastructure, Grundfos chose to work with SoftwareOne to implement Microsoft Azure Kubernetes, a container orchestration platform that provides an optimal way to use the Azure cloud infrastructure and development platform.

Azure Kubernetes shortens release cycles and is faster to work with than Virtual Machines, making it the perfect choice for lean-agile development and building container-based solutions at scale.

The aim of the project was to gain the ability to build scalable and reliable applications faster. Our goal is to provide sustainable, smart solutions to the world’s water problems. Working with Microsoft and SoftwareOne, we developed the Kubernetes platform running on the Azure cloud, which fully supports this objective.

Henrik Rokkjær Fløe

Director, Grundfos

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Future-ready technology

Grundfos's new application development platform is a cloud-based, Kubernetes-based solution that meets the company's current challenges and is poised for future growth.

The solution provides a number of benefits, including:

Flexibility: Services can be deployed to any Kubernetes cluster, regardless of the cloud provider.
Security: Secretless coding and Azure Key Vault protect data, while Azure AD enforces authentication at the service level.
Performance and cost optimisation: Open source components from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) allow Grundfos to monitor performance and ensure that all systems run smoothly, while extensive analytics enable the company to optimise costs as all resources are fully accountable.
The platform is already being used by 18 teams to develop dozens of applications simultaneously, enabling them to build and deploy in an agile fashion and test and build new ideas faster.

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Changing the world, one cluster at a time

As Grundfos looks to expand its operations around the world in its quest to save the planet’s precious resources, its IT application infrastructure keeps up the pace.

Working with Microsoft and SoftwareOne, the company plans to take advantage of the cloud and containers to accelerate the development of new services in new locations for more customers around the globe.

SoftwareOne is committed to empowering people everywhere to focus on delivering meaningful results. Supporting Grundfos in its journey to bring safe, clean water to people is a tremendous undertaking and one that SoftwareOne is very proud to be part of. SoftwareOne looks forward to continuing to work with Grundfos for a better future.