Music in the cloud provides new opportunities for tech companies

The digital music company X5 Music wanted to create a new environment for its digital music services. With more services in the cloud, they have both gained more time for development and reduced the need of support.

The Swedish music company X5 Music operates several digital music services. They developed much of the technology behind the services themselves, and as their success increased, so did the demands.

• “The demands placed on us and our applications regarding availability and support became increasingly difficult for our small development team to manage,” says Klas Broman, CTO for X5 Music. “We needed help with support, monitoring and as creating a more uniform operating environment. This was the situation when we contacted Basefarm.

At the introductory meeting, Basefarm explained how they could help create a more secure environment in Azure (Microsoft’s public cloud) and how they could gradually take over support 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

• “Basefarm had a great offer and they gained our trust right from the start,” says Klas.

Collaboration has now been underway for just over a year, and during this time, X5 Music with the assistance of Basefarm has transformed the services and simplified the solutions to such an extent that the need for Basefarm’s help with staffed monitoring has almost disappeared in favor of more automated solutions.

• “With Basefarm’s help, we are now moving towards an environment that will probably no longer even need a support agreement because things so seldom go wrong,” says Klas. “But if the number of users further increases and the need arises again, we know that we have a good partner that will give us a helping hand.

• “We’re very pleased with collaboration. Basefarm has helped us in using Azure in a good way. They’re at the leading edge, are proactive, honest and always suggest the optimal solutions based on our needs.”