For industrial and manufacturing SMEs
Your admins know your operations. We bring the automation.
For companies with their own administrators but no DevOps team: together with your admins we make servers rebuildable and changes testable and traceable before they go live. We deliver the first case at a fixed price and hand it over so your team can carry it on itself, without operations coming to a halt.
Sound familiar?
Operations run. There's no time to improve them.
Your admins know every system and keep operations running. Day-to-day work leaves little time for automation, testing and documentation. The business carries the risk: many IT outages are not caused by attacks but by updates and rebuilds.
Every server is a one-off
Set up by hand, grown over years, barely documented. If it fails, rebuilding it takes long and rarely comes out the same. And there's no copy to test on safely.
The knowledge lives in one head
How the servers are set up is something one admin has built up over years. If they're unavailable or leave, that knowledge is gone, and every change becomes a shot in the dark.
Every update is a leap of faith
There's no test environment, so you only find out in live operation whether an update works. If it goes wrong, orders, manufacturing or shipping may stand still.
Nobody can say what changed
Suddenly something stops working — but which of last week’s ten changes caused it? Without a record, every investigation becomes expensive guesswork.
Repetitive manual work ties up your team
Setting up servers, installing updates, checking settings: much of it is done by hand every time. That time is then missing for everything that would improve operations.
There is no DevOps team
Automation, versioned configuration and tested changes are standard in software development. IT operations often lack the experience and the time to introduce them.
How it works
Three steps, limited risk
After every step you decide whether to continue. You don't commit to a big project, and you see a result early.
Step 1: Intro call
15 minutes, free, by video. You describe what's coming up or where things are stuck. We ask follow-up questions, give you a first assessment and tell you whether we can help.
Step 2: Pre-check and offer
In a technical pre-check of about an hour, we look at the server you want to start with. You then receive a fixed-price offer with scope, success criteria, fallback plan and the time your admins need to set aside.
Step 3: Pilot with hand-over
We make one critical server restorable and involve your admins from the start. We agree beforehand how success is measured and when we stop. At the end, your team runs the procedure itself. If you like, we keep supporting it afterwards.
The intro call, the technical pre-check and the fixed-price offer are free. You get a clear assessment, even if we don't end up working together.
Photo by Maranda Vandergriff
Services
How we make your IT operations more reliable
Your operations come first: making servers rebuildable and rolling out changes only after they've been checked, together with your admins. Licence switches, migrations and services for your own software build on that. Each service can be commissioned on its own, and we can keep supporting your team afterwards.
We record exactly how your servers are set up, so they can be rebuilt in a traceable, largely automated way. The knowledge then lives in the system instead of in one colleague's head.
Changes to your servers follow a fixed procedure: checked automatically, approved by a colleague, then rolled out. Your admins try updates in a test environment first.
Your applications are packaged so they run in a consistent, reproducible environment. Updates and moves become predictable, and every update comes with a prepared way back.
From your own server room to providers with data centres in Germany and the EU. No ageing hardware, no maintenance contract — and the data stays in Europe.
Web servers, databases, internal tools: whatever doesn't depend on Windows we move to Linux step by step, with a test run and a fallback plan. Whether the switch pays off is shown up front by comparing migration, licences and operations.
Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server is often a large line item in the IT budget. We switch to PostgreSQL, a licence-free database — thoroughly tested, with a fallback plan.
For companies with in-house or contracted development: every change to your software automatically gets its own test version. Business users and the team click through it before anything goes live.
We examine how changes to your software reach live operation, and show where time is lost, where the risks are and what to fix first.
Who is behind it
Andreas Böhrnsen
One contact who does the work
Andreas Böhrnsen founded Frontrunner IO in Berlin. He brings DevOps practices to IT operations: automated procedures, versioned configuration and changes that are checked before they're rolled out. He runs the intro call himself, does the implementation and passes the knowledge on to your admins.Over 20 years in IT
Andreas has worked from development to technical leadership, at software companies serving clients from large enterprises to start-ups. Plus projects at banks, insurers and mid-sized companies.
Implementation, not concepts
We set up the systems ourselves and are there when they go live. No concept that ends up in a folder.
Your team carries it on
We involve your admins from the start. At the end, they run the agreed procedures themselves, with our support and the documentation. Operations stay with you; if you like, we keep supporting your team afterwards.
Photo by Bitkom
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions we hear most often in the first call.
Who is this for?
Industrial and manufacturing SMEs whose IT is run by their own administrators and who have no DevOps team. It is usually about making important servers rebuildable and making changes safe. Building on that, we help cut licence costs for Windows Server, Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server, or make updates to your own software safe.
What does the intro call cost?
Nothing. 15 minutes by video, no obligation. You get a first assessment either way — even if we end up telling you that you don't need us. The technical pre-check of about an hour and the fixed-price offer for the starting project are free as well. Detailed planning across several systems is paid.
What does a pilot cost?
That depends on the scope. You receive a fixed-price offer before we start — no open-ended timesheets, no surprises on the invoice.
We have administrators but no DevOps team. Does this fit?
That's exactly who it's for. Your admins know the systems; we bring the method and the implementation. If you work with an IT provider, we involve them too. If it's about an application you had built, someone also needs to be able to change it, such as the agency or vendor.
How much of our team's time will this take?
That's in the offer before you commit. We do the implementation. We need your admins for knowledge of the existing systems, for check-ins and, at the end, for the hand-over: that's when they run the agreed procedures themselves.
Do our admins have to learn new tools?
A little. Your server setup then lives as configuration in version control and runs automatically. We train your team as far as the handed-over procedures require. If you don't use version control yet, we set it up as part of the project.
Who looks after the automation after the project?
Your team. If you like, we keep supporting it: with set time for questions, reviewing changes together and looking after your CI/CD environment. We agree a fixed monthly fee for that.
Do we have to switch everything at once?
No — quite the opposite. We start with a clearly scoped pilot: one application, one server, one database. Only when it runs do you decide on the next step.
How quickly will we see results?
You receive the fixed-price offer after the technical pre-check. The pilot's duration is part of the offer; it is deliberately scoped small so you see a result early. How a licence switch pays off is shown in the planning up front.
What if the pilot doesn't work?
Before we start, we agree how the pilot's success is measured and when we stop. If the solution does not meet the agreed criteria, it does not go live. We define a fallback plan for the switchover up front; until then your existing systems keep running unchanged.
Do you work on-site or remotely?
Mostly remotely, with on-site visits where they make sense — for example at project start or when the system goes live. Based in Berlin, working with clients across Germany.
Where should you start?
In 15 minutes by video we go through your situation and clarify which case suits a first project. Free and without obligation. Feel free to bring your administrator.