For industrial and manufacturing SMEs
Your admins know your operations. We bring the automation.
We work with your admins to make servers rebuildable and changes testable and traceable before they go live. If you have your own administrators but no DevOps team, we deliver a first project at a fixed price. Your team takes over after handover, while operations keep running.
Sound familiar?
Keeping operations running leaves little time for improvements
Your admins know every system and keep operations running. Day-to-day work leaves little time for automation, testing and documentation. Many IT outages result from updates and rebuilds. The business bears that risk.
Every server is a one-off
The server was set up by hand, has grown over years and is barely documented. Rebuilding it after a failure takes a long time and rarely produces the same setup. There's no copy you can safely test on, either.
The knowledge lives in one head
One admin has spent years learning how the servers are set up. If they're unavailable or leave, the team loses access to that knowledge and has to make changes without it.
Updates go live without testing
Without a test environment, you only find out whether an update works once it's live. If it fails, orders, manufacturing or shipping may stop.
Nobody can say what changed
Something stops working, and you need to find out which of last week's ten changes caused it. Without a record, finding the cause takes time and costly guesswork.
Repetitive manual work ties up your team
Your team repeatedly sets up servers, installs updates and checks settings by hand. That leaves less time to 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
You decide whether to continue after each step. The initial commitment stays small so you can see a result early.
Step 1: Intro call
The 15-minute intro call is free. 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 and handover
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
We start with your admins, making servers rebuildable and checking changes before rollout. From there, we can help with licence changes, migrations and your own software. You can commission each service separately, with continued support for your team if needed.
We record exactly how your servers are set up. Your team can then rebuild them through a traceable, largely automated process without relying on one colleague's memory.
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.
We package your applications to run in a consistent, reproducible environment. This makes updates and moves predictable. Every update includes a prepared rollback.
We move your systems from your server room to providers with data centres in Germany and the EU. You no longer need the ageing hardware or its maintenance contract, and your data stays in Europe.
We move web servers, databases and internal tools that don't depend on Windows to Linux, step by step, with a test run and a fallback plan. Before starting, we compare migration, licence and operating costs to show whether the switch pays off.
Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server licences often account for a large part of the IT budget. We migrate to the licence-free database PostgreSQL, test the migration thoroughly and prepare 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 in development and technical leadership at software companies serving clients from large enterprises to start-ups. His experience also includes projects at banks, insurers and mid-sized companies.
We implement the systems
We set up the systems ourselves and stay involved when they go live.
Your team carries it on
Your admins are involved from the start. At handover, they run the agreed procedures using the documentation and our support. You keep responsibility for operations, and we can continue 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 with their own IT administrators and no DevOps team. We usually start by making important servers rebuildable and changes safe. We can then 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?
The 15-minute intro call is free and comes with no obligation. You get an initial assessment even if our advice is that you don't need us. The technical pre-check takes about an hour and is also free, as is the fixed-price offer for the first project. Detailed planning across several systems is paid.
What does a pilot cost?
The price depends on the scope. Before we start, you receive a fixed-price offer so you know what you'll pay, without open-ended hourly billing.
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?
The offer specifies the time needed before you commit. We do the implementation; your admins explain the existing systems and join check-ins. At handover, they run the agreed procedures themselves.
Do our admins have to learn new tools?
A little. Your server setup will be stored as configuration in version control and applied automatically. We train your team to run the procedures we hand over. 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. We start with a clearly scoped pilot covering one application, server or database. Once it runs, you decide whether to take the next step.
How quickly will we see results?
After the technical pre-check, you receive a fixed-price offer that includes the pilot's duration. We keep its scope small so you can see a result early. For a licence change, the planning shows how the switch pays off before work starts.
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?
We're based in Berlin and work with clients across Germany, mostly remotely. We visit on-site where it makes sense, for example at the start of a project or when a system goes live.
Where should you start?
On a free 15-minute intro call, we discuss your situation and identify a suitable first project. There's no obligation, and your administrator is welcome to join.