IFS Cloud hosting for agribusiness – Canagri Case Study

MAIN fully deserves its reputation as a trusted partner you can rely on for the implementation, maintenance, and development of corporate IT.

In every interaction with them, we feel there are real people on the other side—professionals who are ready to help at any time.

Patryk Doliński Manager IT, Canagri

This case study answers the following questions:

• What were Canagri’s needs regarding hosting IFS Cloud?
• What benefits did the client gain from using MAIN’s Virtual Private Cloud?
• How does the company plan to further develop its IT environment?

About the client

Canagri is a Polish family-owned company with more than 24 years of experience in the agro industry. It offers products and equipment essential for livestock farming, horticulture, professional equestrian sports, and hobby farming. Canagri is the official distributor of brands such as Kerbl, Covalliero, and Magic Brush. In addition, it produces its own range of products at three manufacturing facilities.

The company also provides comprehensive solutions tailored to businesses in the agro sector, including a wide range of products as well as support in merchandising, marketing, e-commerce, and logistics.

We had received excellent feedback about MAIN, so we turned to them for support in configuring our local network.

The collaboration went exceptionally well, so we also engaged their services to implement Identity Management. MAIN’s engineers recommended using Active Directory and deployed it in a private cloud hosted at the MAIN Data Center.

When we began preparing to implement IFS Cloud in our company, MAIN was the natural choice. Their experience in hosting this system was an additional advantage that reinforced our decision.

Patryk Doliński Manager IT, Canagri

You can read more about the optimization of Canagri’s corporate network and the implementation of IdM Active Directory in a separate case study.

Client’s needs – hosting IFS Cloud in a private cloud

The client planned to deploy the IFS Cloud ERP system in a cloud environment. A key priority was to maintain privacy and control over its data while ensuring scalability of resources such as storage and computing power.

Initially, Canagri considered using public cloud hosting. However, dedicated support, including infrastructure management, consistent environment availability, and troubleshooting assistance, was a critical factor. For this reason, the company opted for a private cloud solution with a Data Center provider.

To fully leverage the potential of the cloud, a company needs strong in-house IT competencies. Without them, external support becomes essential—for tasks such as creating, managing, and troubleshooting the virtual environment.

Our internal IT team does not include a dedicated Private Cloud specialist, so we were looking for a comprehensive solution: technology tailored to our needs, combined with dedicated support, all provided by a single vendor.

Patryk Doliński Manager IT, Canagri

Proposed solution – IFS Cloud in MAIN’s cloud

A private cloud is ideally suited to meet key needs such as privacy, resource control, scalability, and dedicated support. Canagri was already experienced with MAIN’s Virtual Private Cloud, where we had previously deployed the Active Directory service.

After several planning meetings, the client decided to host IFS Cloud in MAIN’s Private Cloud.

After working on Canagri’s local network and implementing Active Directory in MAIN’s cloud, we had gained a deep understanding of their IT environment.

So when the client decided to host IFS Cloud in MAIN’s cloud, we worked closely with the external implementation partner to develop a joint solution and set up the necessary environments: development, testing, and production.

Wojciech Lewandowski Head of Cloud Engineering & Operations, MAIN

The MAIN team participated in discussions with the IFS Cloud implementation partner to:

• Ensure seamless integration with the AD environment,
• Configure and allow necessary network traffic,
• Resolve certificate-related issues,
• Provide access to IFS Cloud from various devices (computers, phones, tablets).

Environment Separation

In line with best practices, the cloud implementation created three distinct environments: production, development, and testing. A similar approach was applied to network segmentation. This separation allows, for example, ports to be opened only for specific virtual machines. The environments are isolated and only communicate if specifically requested by the client. This eliminates the risk of accidental actions, such as restarting a service, being triggered in the production environment instead of the development environment.

The client plans to continue developing its IT environment with MAIN and to migrate additional resources.

Benefits of IFS Cloud Hosting in MAIN’s Cloud

The Virtual Private Cloud provided Canagri with numerous benefits:

• Seamless integration of the new software with the rest of Canagri’s IT environment ensures smooth operation of the company’s ecosystem.
• Outsourcing to the Virtual Private Cloud, combined with support from MAIN’s engineers, reduces the load on the client’s server room, lowers maintenance costs, and allows the company to focus on its core business.
• Consulting and support from the MAIN team in planning additional services and application deployments accelerate the client’s IT growth.
• The VPC is based on VMware virtualization, ensuring flexibility and ease of resource expansion.
• The performance of servers and applications has improved, including in testing environments. The client has reported no downtime or other operational issues.

MAIN fully deserves its reputation as a trusted partner you can rely on for the implementation, maintenance, and development of corporate IT. In every interaction with them, we feel there are real people on the other side—professionals who are ready to help at any time.

Thanks to the fast deployment of the environment, we’ve been able to confidently move forward with our plan to gradually migrate from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. This kind of outsourcing helps us offload our server room, reduce costs, and stop worrying about system availability.

The support and guidance we receive from MAIN are invaluable throughout this process. Together, we’re implementing comprehensive solutions tailored to the specific needs of our business. What else can I say? Since we started working with MAIN, I haven’t heard a single IT-related complaint. Everything just works.

Patryk Doliński Manager IT, Canagri