About Rech Informatica
Rech Informatica was founded in 1990 when Carlos and Rovani Rech acquired Microdata Informática and released SIGER® ERP, a Microsoft® Windows®-based integrated business management system used by Brazilian companies in a variety of business segments. SIGER includes over 100 software modules which enable customers to fully automate any business process, improving efficiency and effectiveness. The company is headquartered in Rio Grande du Sul, Brazil. For more information, visit www.rech.com.br
The Challenge
For most of Rech Informatica’s history, customers ran SIGER ERP on their own infrastructure. Recognizing the technical challenges their customers faced with this implementation model, Rech made significant investment in technical support. However, as their customer base grew, and SIGER added new features and functionality, the support team found it increasingly difficult to provide timely service. Adding to the challenge, many technical issues were driven by problems in the customer’s infrastructure, not SIGER, rendering the support rep unable to resolve the issue.
Beginning in 2015, many Rech customers began pushing back on the SIGER self-hosting implementation model. Those customers wanted to eliminate the cost and time investment related to maintaining their SIGER implementation. Since Rech did not offer a cloud-based version of SIGER, customers considering alternatives had two choices: move their SIGER implementation to a cloud services provider, or switch their ERP to a SaaS alternative.
The SIGER platform offers over 100 application modules, including Rech-built applications integrated with partner applications. To support its modules, the platform utilizes multiple databases, operating systems, and development languages. The SaaS-based ERP alternatives did not offer SIGER’s deep functionality—but they did deliver lower cost, simplicity, and convenience.
Rech’s initial response to customers who no longer wanted to self-host was to refer them to Rech’s cloud service provider partners. For some customers, the cost for these cloud services was prohibitive. Those customers switched their ERP to a SaaS competitor, forgoing SIGER’s complete solution for convenience and lower cost.
Customers that moved their SIGER implementation to a cloud provider removed their system management burden, but didn’t stem the volume of support calls to Rech—those calls simply came from the provider instead of the customer.
Simultaneously, Rech began losing new business opportunities to vendors offering SaaS-based ERP solutions for the same reasons driving their customers to alternative providers—the cost of implementing and supporting SIGER in-house.
The company considered rewriting SIGER as a cloud-native application, but quickly realized that they did not have the time or manpower to do so. Rech Informatica resolved to find a solution that would enable them to cost-effectively deliver SIGER from the cloud to retain customers and expand their market share.
First, the solution needed to be able to accommodate SIGER’s complex architecture. Second, the solution needed to allow Rech to deploy new customer environments quickly, with less complexity than required for on- premises deployment. Other requirements included centralized management for each customer implementation and optimization of Rech’s computing resources, which would reduce the cost for delivering SIGER from the cloud and enable Rech to be competitive with existing SaaS ERP solutions.
Finally, Rech wanted to ensure that customers’ SIGER environments were secure. Many SIGER customers who had hosted their implementations on premises using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS) or TSplus had experienced security breaches and ransomware attacks. Rech knew that making SIGER available from the cloud using either product would drive those customers (and any security-conscious customer) to consider web-native ERPs that did not use vulnerable communications protocols like Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), which Microsoft RDS and TSplus utilize.
Solutions
Rech Informatica discovered GO-Global® in 2017 via an internet search. After a brief evaluation, Rech concluded that to fully test SIGER on the GO-Global platform, they needed a value-added reseller (VAR) with GO-Global experience to help them thoroughly evaluate GO-Global’s ability to address their technical challenges.
Soon after evaluating GO-Global, a SIGER customer successfully implemented GO-Global to make SIGER available to employees. Encouraged by their customer’s experience, Rech intensified the search for a GO-Global VAR and formed a partnership with Elosoft Informatica. Initially Rech assigned two members of the IT team to work with Elosoft to evaluate GO-Global. The initial results were positive, so Rech and Elosoft initiated a full-blown POC.
At the end of the POC, Rech and Elosoft came to two conclusions.
Said Diego Blos da Silva, IT Manager, Rech Informatica, “We realized that GO-Global was the solution we needed to migrate our customers to the cloud—and we would be able to focus our efforts on our business without worrying about redesigning all our systems.”
But there was one remaining challenge. Diego continues, “We recognized that to optimize SIGER on GO-Global, we would have to update some SIGER components, for example, data structures. So, the hard work began, but the results brought us a world of advantages and possibilities.”
Rech created a Cloud and DevOps team to drive the process, starting with 5 GO-Global licenses and expanding to 200 in December 2020. In February 2021, Rech began to offer Rech Cloud, a cloud version of SIGER hosted in their on-premises datacenter. Rech’s Cloud and DevOps team began supporting Rech Cloud customers with installation, maintenance, and management services.
“We realized that GO-Global was the solution we needed to migrate our customers to the cloud—and we would be able to focus our efforts on our business without worrying about redesigning all our systems." — DIEGO BLOS DA SILVA, IT Manager, Rech Informatica
Results
Customer adoption of Rech Cloud was swift, doubling user numbers in just a few months. Diego explains, “Now, our teams can focus on the business and optimize our applications instead of solving customers on-premises infrastructure issues. And SIGER performs much better than when deployed on-premises due to GO-Global’s efficient use of computing resources.”
How do SIGER customers like Rech Cloud? Said Diego, “It’s much easier to retain customers because we can migrate them to Rech Cloud and reduce their technology overhead. It’s easier to compete because we have a cloud-based option. And our Support teams are able to provide much faster and improved service to customers who are using SIGER in our Cloud.”
What GO-Global features are especially critical to Rech Informatica? Diego explains, “GO-Global makes it very easy to add and manage new users—we can easily double or triple users with just a few adjustments. We also appreciate the high level of technical support we receive from Elosoft and GraphOn. And, because GO-Global uses its proprietary RapidX Protocol for connectivity rather than Microsoft RDP, and strong encryption for user sessions, our cloud offer is much less vulnerable than one using RDP and RDS.”
Diego concludes, “We recommend GO-Global to all our customers as it is an extremely reliable solution that is adaptable to their needs. With rapid deployment, management is extremely simplified yet highly customizable. With GO-Global, we’ve been able to optimize SIGER’s performance and reduce its resource needs, consequently reducing the cost of our systems for our customer.”
