Digitization leap at a. hartrodt

"a. hartrodt has set itself the goal of being able to inform all customers quickly about the status of their shipments in the future and to set up and operate the desired standard interfaces promptly," explains Peter K. Albrecht, Chief Information Officer (ad interim) at a. hartrodt in Hamburg. Advantage: Customers know exactly where their cargo is currently being transported by land, sea or air, and whether everything is going according to plan. a. hartrodt's data center is currently being converted to a state-of-the-art, scalable architecture. "In future, we will offer a catalog of possible interfaces. They can be linked to our new supply chain platform CargoWise One, which is currently being introduced and which optimizes transport processes," Albrecht summarizes.

Stable and fast systems

"95 percent of the servers have already migrated to the new data center," reports Albrecht. There a. hartrodt has set up a so-called HCI solution (hyper-converged infrastructure). "Storage, data processing and network have grown together," explains the computer scientist. The migration of the data center will be completed by March 2021. "Customers benefit from significantly more stable and faster systems," emphasizes Albrecht.

Investment in security

Operational safety and data security are top priorities for a. hartrodt. In addition to a completely new firewall technology, the company has also invested in two identical data centers with real-time failover security: "We will achieve full redundancy by the final expansion stage in March," explains Albrecht. He has been managing the digitization project for a year and a half. Since then, he has hired a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and strengthened the IT department by a third to around 60 experts. The team has set up an Information Security Management System (ISMS), "which guarantees the highest level of security". Valid data protection rules are implemented worldwide.

By 2022, a. hartrodt is striving for ISO 27001 certification, which is based on the ISMS, as additional proof of security.