8 April, 2025
Organisation: Vispero/Optelec | Industry: medical device manufacturing | Customer with IT Local since: 2003 | Number of employees worldwide: 450 | Number of users with management and support by IT Local: 185 (all locations Europe)
Optelec is part of Vispero, the world's largest developer and manufacturer of optical and electronic aids and software for visually impaired and blind people. It has been improving the quality of life of visually impaired people since 1975. The company has been a client of IT Local since 2003. Anné Sturris, IT Director and contact person from the very beginning, is pleased with the pleasant cooperation in which partnership and trust are central and praises the decisiveness of the IT Local employees: "I will not soon forget the way they rolled up their sleeves after our fire in Germany." More details on the cooperation can be found in this case study.
Highlights
Satisfied users thanks to stable IT environment and good support
Peace of mind, flexibility and predictable costs through IT management outsourcing
Continuous improvement and renewal of IT environment
Back to work quickly after fire in Germany thanks to good backups and hard work at weekends
Optelec is the world's leading developer and manufacturer of optical and electronic devices for visually impaired and blind people, such as screen magnifiers, pre-reading devices and braille displays. The company has been in existence since 1975. After merging in 2015 with US Freedom Scientific, a global leader in software solutions for low vision, and acquiring some other companies, the group continues under the name Vispero.
Around 450 people work for the group worldwide, 185 of them in Europe. Around 75 employees work at Optelec's headquarters in Barendrecht. Within Optelec, people are involved in all facets of operations: from product development to purchasing, logistics and sales. Customer advice and support, contacts with health insurers and order handling within Europe, the Middle East and Africa are also important activities.
Anné Sturris was Senior IT Manager Europe within Vispero/Optelec for many years. Since 1 January 2025, he has been IT Director and has a global role. In recent months, he has been very busy preparing for this and filling this role properly. Before Optelec, Anné had also worked in IT for many years, twelve of which as a technical consultant: "I lived on Tholen in Zeeland, where I still live, and the travelling time to my previous job started to bother me more and more. It was therefore convenient that at that time Optelec's management wanted to set up an internal IT department so that they could make good strategic IT choices using their own knowledge. That department was not yet in place; IT was in the hands of their project manager who managed external suppliers. I was approached by Optelec to start shaping the IT department, said yes and then - in 2014 - started."
Continuous improvement and renewal of the IT environment
Anné started at Optelec as an administrator and, at the time, worked with IT Local to downsize and modernise the IT platform: "We started to virtualise everything via VMware." Today, there is a stable environment in an external data centre with few outages. In the period in between, of course, all sorts of projects and maintenance have been done to improve and renew. Anné also briefly touches on the move: "Just before COVID, we moved from one office/warehouse location to a new office and a separate warehouse. Partly due to IT Local's contribution in the IT field (think of providing internet, routers and vpn), we completed this project successfully. On schedule and within budget."
IT Local now manages the entire IT environment for Europe and provides support. In collaboration with Optelec's internal IT department, which now consists of an Application Analyst, a Systems Administrator and an IT Support Specialist. It involves over 20 servers, around 200 laptops/desktops and 185 users. Users are generally satisfied. Anné: "As long as you don't hear them, it's OK. And if there is something then they know they can create a support ticket for IT Local and then it is usually solved quickly. Moreover, when the time comes, we always look at what we can improve."
"You can't have all the IT knowledge and expertise in-house"
Anné constantly seeks the ideal balance between deploying internal and external people. He looks at knowledge, skills, specialisation, availability and flexibility. He is positive about outsourcing IT work: "You cannot have all the knowledge and skills in-house. And if your own employees are not available, you are at a loss. Another nice thing about outsourcing is that you can estimate the costs and benefits in advance to make the right ROI assessment."
However, outsourcing IT management is not an issue outside Europe. Anné: "Worldwide, I now have a solid IT team, with America and Canada traditionally having more internal IT staff than Europe. Because there is currently good cross-fertilisation between our US specialists and IT Local, the need for outsourcing is less. Within Vispero/Optelec, we thus use the best of all worlds to be successful."
Helped out
On 24 February 2023, there was a serious disaster at Optelec in Schwalmstadt, Germany. In the building where the servers for Optelec Germany were located, as that IT environment was the only one not in the external data centre. Anné: "Before noon, we received signals that something was wrong there and IT Local naturally received those signals through their monitoring. So this turned out to be a fire on one of the lower floors of the building. Started in the room next to the server room, the place where the virtual platform was. The result was damage in the server room and about 20 workstations that we could write off. Our IT equipment was covered in soot and other gunk. And. business operations were at a complete standstill: no more IT and no more logistics."
"Over the weekend, they rolled up their sleeves as a team to fix it"
"Together with IT Local and our management in Germany, I immediately set to work to get the IT environment up and running again using an existing disaster recovery plan. That plan worked, and partly due to the tireless efforts of IT Local's staff, we were able to invoice again as early as Monday morning! They really felt the urgency and rolled up their sleeves as a team over the weekend to fix it. Day and night, alternating when an unavoidable private appointment came through or it was really time to take a break.
The backup tooling also worked well, and we were fortunate that parts of the local IT environment were briefly made accessible. This allowed the IT Local staff to secure the latest ERP data with some tricks. As a result, we had zero data loss!"
For Anné, this incident once again confirmed the added value of the partnership with IT Local: "We could never have done this kind of rescue operation with our own people/resources. And not all IT people are cut from the right cloth to act so proactively either."
Further modernisation
Due to the fire in Germany, that environment is now in the VDI environment on IT Local's shared platform. That was the best option: future-proof and flexible to scale up, scale down or choose something else after all. It also prevented Optelec from suddenly incurring a lot of extra costs. That construction is an exception, though. "For the rest of Europe, we will continue on the same footing and continue to use the environment in the existing external data centre," says Anné. "That has to do with the complexity of our application landscape. Because we deal with almost all aspects of business operations as a company, there is quite a lot of digital traffic and we work with many different programmes, systems and integrations. Some of these place stringent demands on the environment. As a result, a VDI environment is still too pricey a solution for our situation at the moment."
"New servers, hardware and database platform upgrade"
"IT Local is helping us further modernise the IT environment this year: including new servers for the Netherlands, UK and Belgium, new hardware and an upgrade of the database platform. Some of the equipment was gradually reaching the end of its life cycle. Then we will look further to fill in the roadmap. With security, we are of course constantly working on it, but I do want to have a new security scan when we have finished the renewals. Because we are changing quite a lot. Making more use of all the possibilities Microsoft 365 has to offer - to the full extent - I also see as an important next step."
"Furthermore, I am curious about the opportunities in Power Automate for smarter workflows. Because workflows work! We have those in Exact Synergy now, but an integration with Microsoft could really give it higher added value."
Pleasant cooperation
Anné is satisfied with the pleasant and good cooperation with IT Local and the added value it brings to Vispero/Optelec. "Because I myself also know how things work well, we can determine and implement the right projects together. Backups, for example, are pricey, but are one hundred per cent necessary. There is no discussion about that internally. And the constant monitoring of our environment ensures that I can sleep peacefully. If something is wrong, I know. When that was not the case the other day and I did not receive a signal from management when alarms were raised for a power failure, I did make a point of it. Because at the same time, I am also critical."
"Every now and then I explore the market, but I haven't found a reason to switch yet"
"All in all, IT Local is really a partner I can rely on. That incident handling after the fire is the best example. I do always try to be transparent and objective in the cooperation. Every now and then I explore the market, but I haven't found a reason to switch yet."
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