Visma is a leading European software provider based in Norway. The owner of more than 170 companies across the continent, Visma sees cloud technology as key to its success and that of its entire ecosystem. Over the past few years, it has been pushing for cloud adoption both at an internal level and across its wider network – encouraging all companies in its group to embrace the cloud they prefer, at their own terms. Microsoft Azure has been a pivotal part of this process. At Visma, it has formed part of a multi-cloud platform and beyond, and it’s getting selected by hundreds of other companies in the Visma group as primary cloud provider.
“AI and cloud computing are not about making one-size-fits-all. Their greatest power is that you can use them not just to drive transformation, but to do that on your own terms.”
Alexander Lystad, Group CTO at Visma, is describing digital transformation at his company and how it’s helping it to drive innovation and growth.
“Visma’s goal is to shape the future of society through technology,” he says. “We want to build mission-critical software spanning as many segments and markets as possible. And we want to do that through digitalization and cloud at scale.”
But this is no easy task for a company like Visma. With more than 170 companies in its portfolio, Visma leads a huge group of owned companies which it’s been encouraging to move to the cloud to be more scalable, fast and secure.
“We want to empower them and support them in their journey to the cloud,” he says. “But because each of them comes with its own, unique degree of digital maturity, it’s hard to find a provider that works for all.
“By partnering with Microsoft and other cloud providers – as part of our multi-cloud strategy we’ve found a way to address this. We’re making sure that each organization embraces cloud that works specifically for them – and does it at their own pace.”
Building digital foundations to drive more value
Headquartered at an iconic, ship-shaped glass building overseeing the Oslo fjord, in Norway, Visma is a business software provider serving 1.6 million global customers.
The company has seen huge growth since it was first established in 1996 and has been marking this growth with the acquisition of 300 companies from all over Europe in the space of a few years. This has led them to employ a mammoth 15,000 people between Norway and abroad.
According to Lystad, much of this success is owed to the company’s digitalization views and continuous investment in technology it has pioneered over the decades. “It’s simple,” he says. “Our goal is to provide critical software to businesses around the world. You can’t do that without a solid technology foundation.”
In recent years, this has meant looking into ways to deliver more value to customers at a faster rate, he says. “A few years back, we started exploring this need from a strategic point of view,” he adds. “And decided to put together a continuous delivery and transformation model centered around driving automation, flexibility and scalability using the public cloud.
“It was the very beginning of our cloud migration journey.”
Bringing value outside of Visma
Fast forward a few years, and Visma is now operating in a multi-cloud environment that has Microsoft as one of its strategic providers. This, says Morten Bakken, Cloud Architect and Community Facilitator at Visma, is playing a crucial role for the company – allowing them to drive growth and innovation while also providing access to new AI and Developer platforms.
“Being on the cloud is allowing us to move a lot faster than before,” he explains. “Having this whole new toolbox of solutions available gives us higher innovation capabilities, flexibility, elasticity. We can run experiments on whatever kind of hardware or service we would like, and we can get that at the snap of our fingers instead of ordering servers and waiting for weeks or months.”
These are benefits that Visma doesn’t want just for itself, but also for the companies in its network.
But this comes with its own challenges. “We want to help all the companies in our group to be flexible, fast and secure when it comes to their operations, and we know that moving to the cloud is central to it,” he says.
“At the same time, we can’t give them a ready-made approach when it comes to its implementation. They all work with different technologies, different stacks, different cultures, so they need to have something more tailored to their needs.”
To help them do that, Visma has come up with an internal framework centered around building, releasing and operating services in the cloud. “We’ve put together a team whose main purpose is to help organizations move to their cloud platform of choice,” he explains.
“We decided to call it the Visma Cloud Delivery Model.”
Implementing Microsoft Azure in the ERP field
Since its birth in 2015, the Visma Cloud Delivery Model has helped to transform tens of companies within the Visma group. Back then, the average of Visma product releases was around six per year. By 2022, the figure has skyrocketed to 29 releases per month.
“By moving to the cloud using the VCDM, we’re essentially updating software from being a 2-month project to something that happens on a daily basis,” Bakken.
He adds that the beauty of the model is that it’s designed to offer migration support at 360 degrees – from choosing the right partner to planning the cloud move as well as upskilling the teams.
Whenever called for, Visma also involves vendors like Microsoft in the companies’ journey. “Microsoft is a very special partner for us,” he continues. “It’s been really good at creating a local team that feels quite close to us and is therefore always available to come and help whenever needed.”
This has made Microsoft Azure a rather popular choice for companies across Visma’s group, especially in the realm of ERP solutions. “Azure is a great fit for companies that have a heavy Microsoft technology stack, particularly on the database and SQL server side, as well those who are very much willing to innovate with AI,” he says.
“That’s exactly what lots of ERP providers want: secure, flexible systems that allow them to operate fast and independently, but also introduce intelligent features to increase employee productivity.
“And our subsidiary organization Visma Software AS is a perfect example of that.”
Inside Visma Software AS’ migration
Based in Norway but active internationally, Visma Software AS provides ERP, Payroll and Reporting solutions to thousands of customers.
“We are one of the largest companies operating within the Visma group,” says Alexandra Mallcott, Head of Development in Visma Software at Business NXT. “We are specialized in developing and selling cloud-based business systems in finance, logistics, payroll and reporting for medium-sized and large companies. And we believe that the cloud is key to that.”
Visma Software has spent the past three years turning this vision into reality – and embracing Microsoft Azure to develop a next-generation cloud ERP called Business NXT.
“We have thousands of customers spread across Norway and beyond, all of whom are asking for one key thing from us,” she says. “A scalable, flexible ERP system that gives them access to our latest features but doesn’t require having to manage the complexity and costs of an on-prem setting."
“Using Azure, that’s exactly what we’re giving them: continuous delivery of the latest features, model versions, security and updates gathered in one place. In other words, Business NXT.”
This, she says, adds up to several other benefits that moving to the Microsoft Cloud has brought – including access to Azure SQL Elastic Pools and the possibility to modernize services using Azure SQL. “Before, we were able to deliver updates only a couple of times a year,” says Mallcott. “Now, we can release them several times a week.
“In turn, that’s given us a much wider ecosystem of features and offerings for our customers, as well as a more complete package of products compared to when we were on-prem.”
She says Microsoft has played a pivotal role in making this happen. “We can now get crucial insights about the usage of the product and use them to provide even better services,” she adds.
“This is something that we didn’t have before the cloud. We are really grateful for the support Microsoft has given us along the whole way."
Looking ahead
As more and more organizations in the network pivot to the cloud, both Visma and Visma Software are starting to look ahead to the next big innovation – specifically exploring new opportunities in Data, Analytics and AI.
“By moving to the cloud, we’ve been able to get greater insights into product usage, and we’re hoping to make most of them to innovate our software even more,” says Mallcott. “We would also like to extend our data model and database so that the customers can introduce their own fields, tables, and put integrations on top of them.
“In the long run, we would like to implement AI on this and other uses, like our regular business processes, accounting and logistics and more.”
This is something Alexander Lystad says is already starting to happen at a wider Visma level – particularly exploring new possibilities within OpenAI models.
“Whatever sector you operate in, and whatever goals you’re looking to achieve, harnessing AI and the cloud will always help you get there. And it will help you do that according to your needs,” he concludes.
“By working with Microsoft, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“We can now get crucial insights about the usage of the product and use them to provide even better services. This is something that we didn’t have before the cloud.”
Alexandra Mallcott, Head of Development in Visma Software at Business NXT, Visma
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