With the help of Cegal, Fonus can feel secure with its databases

Having a reliable partner who assists with help and support is important, especially when it comes to databases and IT systems. SQL Service (hereafter referred to as Cegal), which is part of Cegal, has been helping Fonus for six years and now ensures that Fonus can feel secure that their databases are under constant control.  

With the help of Cegal, the funeral agency Fonus has speeded up its databases. While performance has increased, the databases are more stable and secure.

- High database performance means, among other things, that our employees work more efficiently and that our customers get a better experience of digital services. At the same time, I can sleep well when I know that our most business-critical information is stable and secured against data breaches or system crashes, says Anders Eskilsson, IT manager at Fonus.

Fonus is part of the Fonus Group, a group that offers services in funeral counseling and law. They have around 1,000 employees in the group and operate in Sweden and Norway, but most of the operations are in Sweden.

The benefits of having Cegal as a supplier

A big win for Anders and his colleagues at Fonus has been the support they have received from Cegal. If Fonus has experienced a heavily loaded database, it has been a great help for Anders to be told that he is not alone in experiencing the problems. Anders believes that it may sound banal, but that it's actually very valuable to know that they are in the same boat as many others with the same application.

Another important win is that since they switched to the Enterprise version, all Fonus data is now encrypted. Should a breach take place, the data that exists is not readable, which is very good from an extortion perspective. It's simply impossible to read what is in the database.

To summarize the gains, security, and reliability are highly valued. The security work that has been done has also contributed to increased business opportunities because Fonus can emphasize that they are a reliable partner thanks to the protection they have today.

- The performance part is also a big win because the end users feel that the application runs faster. It is thanks to the fact that they have continuously worked on maintaining indexes and thus obtained better performance. With 1,000 employees sitting and working with the application every day, they can now work much more efficiently because it goes faster, which is a big business value, says Anders.

Cegal was a natural choice for Fonus

Anders, says that it was when he started at Fonus six years ago that he realized he needed external help. Fonus consists of two business areas and has two different business systems, one was launched in connection with Anders starting at Fonus, while the other was launched shortly afterward. Fairly soon after the applications were launched, Fonus experienced performance issues and realized that Fonus needed help solving them.

Anders knew that it required specific knowledge about database questions and how they are received and how it is installed and it was in that context that he realized that he needed help, and knew from previous experience that a DBA or a database expert thinks in a different way than a developer does.

In situations that may arise between customer and supplier, it is not unusual to end up at a knowledge disadvantage. As a client, it is therefore good to have a neutral party, and Anders had come into contact with Cegal since his previous employer.

I wanted an advisor and enforcer when working with suppliers.

Anders Eskilsson at Fonus  

A proactive partner

That's how the whole relationship between Fonus and Cegal started, and Cegal was given an administrative assignment as his first task because Fonus needed to review its Windows servers. Cegal would then manage and develop the Fonus database environment. They would optimize memory capacity and memory utilization as well as optimize indexes, that is, things that Fonus knew were difficult things but that could give a good effect on the application. Fonus has continuously received this help and there have also been cases where Cegal has also had to participate in the dialogue and planning for major upgrades.

Something that has been appreciated by our external suppliers is when Cegal assisted with reading out or importing data during upgrades, says Anders.

- For the past year, we have worked with security. We had standard versions of the SQL databases, which meant that the data was not encrypted. Given the threat picture that exists, Cegal has worked proactively and, among other things, suggested to them that we switch to Enterprise to access increased encryption, which is something we did, says Anders.

Through the years that Fonus and Cegal have worked together, much has been achieved and currently Fonus uses Cegal's service Database Restore Test as a Service. It's an automated service that ensures your backups work. For Fonus, it is extremely important to know that their business-critical data can be retrieved said. Previously, they had the service as an on-prem, but following a recommendation from Cegal, in view of the increased threat picture that exists, Fonus chose to put the service in the cloud in order to detect if they would be affected by ransomware.

- Over the years, the collaboration has always worked well, it has been a constructive collaboration and if problems have arisen along the way, they have always solved it together, says Anders.

Furthermore, Anders emphasizes the importance of not being dependent on others.

- People start and end and Cegal has always been able to replace one person with another, that is something that is good, says Anders in the end.

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