So, who am I? I am a lucky boy. At least that’s how I would describe myself. I was lucky to grow up in several cultures. Being a stranger in my own country showed me how different and at the same time similar cultures are, especially in the perception of values. Another stroke of luck was that our family, as immigrants, was at the bottom of society’s hierarchy. At that time, of course, I didn’t feel lucky, but today I realise that a large part of my gratitude and humility stems from then.

So much for the starting advantages in life. But my lucky streak never stopped. At the age of 15, I left home and earned my living on my own, besides going to school. Here I learned what freedom and autonomy mean and that it is one of the greatest drives of human beings.

In my many part-time jobs as a pupil and student, I met many, many interesting people. Some were dishwashers, factory workers or managers, but they all had a story. They were all pursuing a dream. The common theme in all these stories was almost always the pursuit of a higher purpose. That was the second great insight of my life.

Self-determination and striving for something greater than oneself are two of the great foundations for human action. There was only one building block missing to understand the big picture. But I needed another 15 years to get there.

In my early twenties, Fortuna carried me into an IT career. Starting as a call centre agent at a start-up telco that had a rocket-like rise, I went through all levels of the hierarchy at an incredible speed and ended up in IT as a network engineer. I was lucky to have great colleagues, bosses and mentors who wanted to feed my incessant hunger for new insights and knowledge. My passion for learning developed into an addiction to perfection.

Whenever I thought I had reached perfection, new questions arose and I was able to dig deeper or go in a new direction. Every day something new came up and I began to shatter from my own expectations. But then suddenly it clicked, after 15 years of hustling. It wasn’t perfection I was aiming for. It was the way to get there. Now I had finally found all three pieces of the puzzle for my happiness.

That was the birth of Hardwarewartung 24.

I joined the Green IT movement in 2001 and unfortunately had to realise that Green IT can only be achieved by cutting costs. Because no one wants to pay for something that is everyone’s fault. So the big goal is to reduce costs significantly and increase quality at the same time. The fact that we also save the world in the process is a nice side effect.

That’ s how we are driving the Green IT movement.

• By extending the lifespan of data centre hardware.
• By reducing maintenance costs.

In order to substantially reduce maintenance costs and at the same time increase quality, we work on small but essential points every day. In sum, these daily improvements make the difference. Every day we offer our customers more ways to keep their hardware running longer and pay even less for it.

These points have enabled us to achieve the most so far:

• By eliminating direct sales. We sell our maintenance exclusively online.
• By digitising and automating almost all of our processes. From quoting, to order processing, to logistics and fulfilment to fix a customer’s fault, all processes are completely digitised.
• By increasing the fault resolution rate on the first customer visit to over 95%.

Every step is optimised, automated and adjusted every day.

Our customers stay with us because they want to, not because a contract forces them to. Every client is free to decide on SLAs, payment terms, contract terms or durations. The only obligation our customers have with us is the personal one.

Freedom and autonomy also apply to all our employees. Because only happy employees can also make customers happy. That is why everyone is not only allowed to work from where he or she wants, but also what, how, when and for how short or long he or she wants. Everyone can also take as much holiday as he or she wants. Everyone has to be self-determined and work as a team to do all the tasks that are necessary to make our customers happy. Because in the end, that’s all that matters.