Unior Group drives the future of its diverse business with HPE intelligent infrastructure

Unior Group in Slovenia have simplified their IT management with intelligent, composable servers, storage, and networking solutions from HPE.

Unior is one of the leading worldwide manufacturers from Slovenia, producing key components for the auto industry, as well as hand tools for craftsmen and special-purpose machines for steel processing. The company needed a reliable IT infrastructure for critical manufacturing and catering activities and the agility of the infrastructure to respond quickly to new business requirements.

All of this was accomplished by simplifying IT management at Unior with intelligent, compliant servers, storage, and networking solutions provided by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). By constantly investing in technologies that enable IT to grow and adapt to ever-changing business requirements, Unior is now ready for the future.

“HPE and Unior have been working together in the field of information technology for many years. This collaboration brought an understanding of needs on the one hand and portfolio and service opportunities on the other. This is rare in the business of two companies. Excellent collaboration is also supported by the strong performance of the HPE partner network, which brings the HPE experience even closer to end customers. We can only wish for such an attitude in business,” explains Boštjan Kosi, Sales Director at Hewlett Packard Enterprise operated by Selectium.

Rok Planinšec, IT Director of Unior, agreed: “the Slovenian Selectium team reflects a strong commitment to their business. It is a partnership where we can talk openly about our challenges and goals and together find technology solutions to lead Unior into the future.”

The driving force is the desire to be first and best

The small Unior IT team matched the needs of a diverse business with an intelligent infrastructure built on HPE technologies, reducing complexity and simplifying infrastructure operations. Ivan Cizel, Head of IT at Unior, explains: “We insist on HPE technologies because they are easy to use and to operate. Our HPE systems are almost 100 % available, allowing us to focus on higher-level issues.”

Progress is easier when you have great partners with you, and the project advanced thanks to partner company Arhides, who played a key role in implementation of the new equipment.

“Unior’s information environment is a good example of how a symbiosis between different actors – Unior, Hewlett Packard Enterprise operated by Selectium and Arhides – can lead to excellent results. Cooperation and complexity of projects with both Unior and HPE was a pleasure and a challenge at the same time,” emphasizes the director of Arhides, Borut Šosterič.

Technology is the answer to the demands of the future

The constant desire for progress often puts IT services in an un-enviable position, as they must be constantly ready to respond to new resource needs in a short time – new virtual servers, additional storage space and so on. As business requirements increased and the previous HPE infrastructure required an upgrade, it was a logical decision for Unior to invest in HPE Synergy compliant infrastructure and intelligent storage to run critical HPE Primera applications. Unior also uses Aruba network solutions for core network and Wi-Fi, as well as dedicated HPE StoreOnce disk-to-disk backups with Veeam’s Backup & Replication for backup.

“HPE Synergy and HPE Primera provide us with the agility to respond quickly when a company needs services for a new project. At the same time, they simplify business operations and enable us to provide our end-users with a responsive and flawless experience,” explains Ivan Cizel, Head of IT at Unior.

For IT Director Rok Planinšec, the demand for high availability tipped the scales: “It’s imperative our business users can access critical systems to support our production operation and be able to complete reservations for guests at our resorts. Guaranteed 100 % up-time was an important factor for choosing HPE Primera. We cannot afford downtime in any area of our business.”

To simplify management of the information infrastructure, Unior relies on HPE OneView, which acts as a stand-alone interface for providing, updating and integrating software-defined systems (computer, memory and network) in the data center. They also use HPE InfoSight to continuously monitor the health and performance of the infrastructure. For added assurance, Unior counts on expert technical support from HPE Proactive Care, which plans and delivers firmware upgrades and patches so the IT team can stay focused on the business.

Learn more about the results of the outstanding collaboration between Unior d. d. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the case study.