The other day we were talking about how it all began, with us and the cloud. So it’s about time we take a look back, at the history of ROSSY.
The main reason that ROSSY exists is, Stefan. For this reason, in order to tell the story of ROSSY properly, we have to delve into some history and explain the beginnings of his story.
Lifelong! IT enthusiasm.
Our captain fell into the digital couldron early on in his life. Since doing so, Stefan has come to witness many IT milestones, experiencing first-hand, the early innovations of the 80s and subsequently widening his own scope of know-how. His enthusiasm with tech is apparent; sharing his digital knowledge with the next generation. His energy to pursue living with state-of-the-art technology, and always wanting to become even more digitally minded, paved the path to ROSSY being founded.
Our captain grew up in a time when computer owners still had to bring imagination and the spirit of discovery to overcome challenges. Back then, your top-of-the-range computer didn’t have a fancy user interface – it was all down to mastering that pixelated command line. Nobody thought about user experience, round corners or swiping left and right. No no, this was an age where Stefan watched a Telekolleg tutorial, on how to build a computer from individual parts … on his television, no less.
Anyone who voluntarily wanted to have something to do with computers at that time … can rightly be considered a bit weird. But that’s how it happens that a clever boy like Stefan, who is not yet of age, earns the money for his driving licence by writing a programme for financial mathematics calculations for his field worker dad on the world’s first laptop, the Epson HX-20. Today, the Epson HX-20 is a mobile mammoth. Back then it was high-tech, with an integrated matrix printer and microcassette recorder, as well as a datasette.
Personal computers
Stefan has typed on almost every home computer that has made digital history: from the ZX81 and Oric to the VIC20 and the Commodore 64. He witnessed the battle between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as a ball boy on the field. That was nonsense. But those of you who still believe that digital natives have to be teenagers … don’t know the garage generation that helped launch digitalisation in the 80s, 90s and 00s. Stefan sent his very first email at the beginning of the 90s and was a user of the first hour on one of the first social platforms. Usenet!
He was part of the moon landing generation that believed in and enthusiastically applied technologies like LAN, WAN, modems and ISDN cards. WLAN changed everything for people at the time. It loosened the chains of digitality and morphed true mobility. The first mobile phones and mobile telephones were the blueprint of our mobility today and significant drivers of globalisation.
Digital fascination
Technological fascination was Stefan’s motivation from the very beginning; to digitise himself and the people around him. From the very beginning he appreciated clean, pragmatic, lean solutions that created real added value. It isn’t really surprising that he hasn’t spent an hour of his life in employment and prefers to realise his ideas as a self-employed person.
The development of the Novell high-tech servers at that time, marked the birth of network and server technology. Stefan won his first customers in the industry by employing Windows server NT 3.51, cabling and network technologies, which were exactly his thing. He wanted his customers to benefit from modernized, high-tech solutions. In 1993 he founded his first limited company – which, by the way, still exists today and is called ROSSY.
Customer liaiser
At the same time, captain Stefan has always been concerned with entrepreneurial competitiveness. With his WI degree, Stefan is able to establish a fundemental understanding of the customers side. While still a student, he took on system administration roles as a freelancer for small and medium-sized companies. He supported their in-house system administration for local servers, mail servers, application servers, mail connectivity and telephony, with him providing support in finding and selecting hardware or software solutions. Stefan’s solutions were always tailored to the company or environment at hand. Just a word of warning though, Stefan still assumes no responsibility for any missing sweets from his clients’ desks.
Over time and with his increasingly comprehensive experience, Stefan established himself in the business of managing projects. He implemented solutions to challenging tasks, such as cabling infrastructure, designs, copper wiring, fibre optic technologies and cabling concepts involving light. He handled large migrations and as project lead, managed IT relocations due to companies moving or selling on.
Finding ways to implement active network technology was Stefan’s next big interest. Implementing the first public hotspots for hotels in Munich, Stefan coordinated digital infrastructures for access points, routers and WLAN bridges, WLAN technologies and portal computers, a first for its time!
He is betting on the next big thing: active network technology. Together with a business partner, he is building the first public hotspots in the history of the world for hotels in Munich, including digital infrastructures such as access points, routers and WLAN bridges, WLAN technology and portal computers. No longer was homo mobiltelephonis limited to using the internet in the hotel lobby, but throughout the entire hotel. Yeah!
For several years, Stefan then looked after Bausch + Lomb and other media companies in the SKY/Premiere environment in Unterföhring.
Hello umwerk systems. Hello ROSSY!
Stefan’s enthusiasm for IT is lifelong and is reflected in ROSSY. A meeting with Andreas Jungbauer, managing director of the already existing umwerk in Munich, sealed the decision around 2012 to position themselves for more growth with their own services. They founded umwerk systems GmbH (now ROSSY) and expanded the range of services that umwerk GmbH had to offer, now including components for the operation and support of highly complex digital customer infrastructures. Entire television formats now run on similarly designed infrastructures, take for example, the case of RTL 2.
Gradually, our umwerk systems was able to recruit really cool experts as collaborators, who so happen to form one hell of a team with their individual portfolios. With their help, we were able to provide professional, high-quality hosting operated from within Germany. In order to meet customer requirements with extremely high or differing traffic flows (such as RTL 2 with its format “Berlin Tag und Nacht”), we evolved ourselves into a cloud provider, using Kubernetes and Docker as core utilities. We are developing into specialists for IT infrastructures, based on the solutions that market leaders such as AWS, provide. As is our digital nature, we are shifting and channelling deeper and deeper into cloud expertise. We are already keeping our eyes open for the next digital milestones and how we can use them. We are not idling ourselves, but continuing to evolve and become ever better.
We deliver DevOps, Managed Services, Cloud Management, Kubernetes & Docker as well as Infrastructure as Code to our customers. Each environment is individually tailored to the specific operational challenges of that customer. In 2021, our state-of-the-art buzzword(s) are smart technologies, products and devices, IoT, hybrid infrastructures, big data, mixed and augmented realities and software as a service. We focus on AI and machine learning to excell our progress towards digitalisation, with the hopes to catapult us into the next chapter of IT modernization.
The boundaries between local IT, and IT in different locations around the world, are that they’re becoming increasingly blurred. We find cloud concepts and the technology within them, optimal to once again usher in the next generation. They are an essential part of our work and the source to many of our business success stories.
Stefan’s formula for success and a better world, remains unchanged:
Nice people + supportive mentality + know-how + high-tech = ROSSY
Credits: Michael Seemeier