Cloud No Longer Manageable with Native Tools

STIEBEL ELTRON is a family-owned company with more than 100 years of history, known today for its highly efficient products and services in heating, cooling, ventilation, and hot water systems. Over the years, the company’s IT infrastructure went through several evolutionary stages: from its own data center to outsourcing, private cloud, and finally Microsoft 365. But as cloud usage increased, so did the complexity.

"We were early adopters of the cloud, but the more services we enabled, the clearer it became: without standardization and governance, it simply wouldn’t be manageable," says Sebastian Schoppe, Head of IT Organization. With limited resources, it became increasingly difficult to meet the combined demands of security, efficiency, and global growth.

What STIEBEL ELTRON needed was a solution that delivered best practices while still allowing room for company-specific requirements. glueckkanja convinced them with a 100% Microsoft approach, a blueprint framework, and strong implementation expertise.

From Client Standardization to a Solid Azure Foundation

The first step was the Global Client, STIEBEL ELTRON’s unified global workplace based on Intune and Autopilot, enhanced by RealmJoin as an Intune companion for software packaging, updates, and a centralized software store. In addition to standard applications, numerous Stiebel-specific tools were packaged, ensuring every department had everything they needed from day one.

As a pilot, STIEBEL ELTRON deliberately chose its customer service organization and the company’s second-largest sales location in Switzerland — a clear sign of confidence in the new model. The rollout was seamless: entire production sites were migrated over a single weekend. A particularly striking example came from Vietnam: a new employee unpacked her laptop and was fully operational shortly afterward. "She had complete access to our infrastructure, all required software — everything was there, even though we didn’t yet have a physical office in the country," Schoppe recalls.

A key element was STIEBEL ELTRON’s global footprint. Azure regions were activated worldwide, and local data centers and workloads were consolidated into the cloud. This reduced complexity, unified the landscape, and significantly increased security.

The staged onboarding provided two major advantages: standards could be tested under real-world conditions, and stakeholders were quickly convinced by tangible results. "The Azure Foundation gives us governance and security based on best practices while still allowing the Stiebel way," Schoppe explains.

Next came the transition into the managed service. Since then, the Azure Foundation has been continuously refined, regionally adapted, and monitored. The result: a stable and secure platform that remains flexible — for example, enabling a dedicated authorization model for the Nordic subsidiaries.

Stiebel Eltron also introduced the Azure Virtual Desktop Foundation, replacing the previous Citrix environment. Employees and external partners now access a unified Stiebel-standard desktop from any device, billed flexibly on a time-and-material basis.

When Standards Create Business Value

With Modern Client and Azure Foundation, STIEBEL ELTRON now operates a globally unified IT environment. New devices are ready in hours instead of days. Security features like auto-wipe, multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on are standard. Even automatic isolation of compromised clients is in place. "Sometimes we learn within seconds that someone clicked a not-so-great link. The client isolates itself and the rest of the company stays protected," says Schoppe.

Standardization is also paying off in service operations: using large-scale data analytics, potential issues in heat pumps can be detected before customers ever notice them.

A Partnership Built on Trust

The partnership between STIEBEL ELTRON and glueckkanja is defined by trust and continuity. Consultants have supported the company for years, technically strong and personally approachable. "In the end, it’s the people who bring the solution to life. With glueckkanja, I always feel in good hands, competent and genuinely collaborative," Schoppe says.

Security as the Next Chapter

Mit NIS2 rückt das Thema Managed SOC in den Fokus. Erste Proof-of-Concepts mit glueckkanja und Microsoft Sentinel sind bereits gelaufen. Wie die endgültige Lösung aussehen wird, ist offen. Klar ist: Die Sicherheitsarchitektur wird weiter ausgebaut auf Basis einer standardisierten und flexiblen Plattform. "Wir wachsen mit den Lösungen und wir wachsen mit unseren Partnern", so Schoppe.

With NIS2 approaching, Managed SOC has become a strategic priority. Initial proofs of concept with glueckkanja and Microsoft Sentinel are already underway. The final design is still open, but one thing is clear: the security architecture will continue to evolve on a standardized yet flexible platform. “We grow with our solutions — and with our partners,” Schoppe notes.

About STIEBEL ELTRON

The invention of the immersion heater by Dr. Theodor Stiebel in 1924 laid the foundation for the company. He made hot water production faster, safer, and more convenient. Since then, STIEBEL ELTRON has become one of the leading providers of efficient hot water and climate-friendly heat pump technologies. In addition to its production sites in Germany, the company manufactures in Sweden, Slovakia, Thailand, China, and the United States. Around 5,000 employees work for STIEBEL ELTRON worldwide.

"As an independent, family-owned business, we think and act with a long-term perspective — not in quarterly cycles. STIEBEL ELTRON is and remains a family-run company — you feel it in the collegiality, the long tenures, and the way we build our IT just as sustainably as our products," Schoppe explains.