Ster (Stichting Etherreclame) was established in 1965 to sell advertising space on the channels of the Dutch Public Broadcasting Organisation (NPO).
Ster is an independent, non-profit foundation. Advertising revenue is fully transferred to the Ministry of Education, Culture & Science, which in turn uses it to fund public broadcasting. This enables Ster to play an important role in facilitating the high-quality programmes and content of the NPO.
Ster began using Azure in 2008, but at that time did not have a CSP (Cloud Solution Provider). When later transitioning to Office 365, it was crucial for Ster to always have access to Premier Support, as their infrastructure was essential to their operations.
In 2019, Microsoft decided to discontinue direct support for smaller customers and advised them to find a CSP partner for further support. Given the critical importance of a reliable IT environment for Ster, they began an extensive search for a highly regarded CSP partner in the Netherlands. In June 2019, Intercept was ultimately selected as the CSP partner for Ster. Since then, Ster has worked with Intercept for the management and support of their Azure environment.
Background:
Since 2019, Intercept has managed Ster’s infrastructure. During this collaboration, Ster noticed that Intercept had skilled and experienced technicians. Until then, Ster had mostly managed IT internally, as they rarely engaged external parties. However, in 2022, the need arose to replace the sales system. The challenge was how to organise and implement this effectively. This marked the beginning of Starlight 2.0.
Starlight 2.0
The new Starlight sales system needed to be modern, robust, and reliable, running on Azure. While Ster knew exactly what they needed, they lacked the internal expertise to build it. Crucial knowledge of network architecture, security, setting up a landing zone, uptime, and backups was missing within the team.
To ensure flexibility, Ster decided to separate the software and infrastructure. Centric was chosen for software development due to their proven expertise. For the infrastructure, Ster selected Intercept, both for their specialised Azure knowledge and the trust developed during previous collaborations. With this setup, Ster laid the foundation for a future-proof sales platform.
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"Intercept provided an Azure platform on short notice, enabling both internal and external developers to work securely. For the first time, we confidently granted an external party access to our internal systems. Something we were able to fully trust Intercept with."
Marc Punte, System and Network Architect, Ster
The challenge:
Centric was responsible for developing the entire software package, while a specific part of the project (the infrastructure) was handled by Intercept. This could have potentially caused friction between the parties. To ensure the success of the project, it was essential that Centric and Intercept communicated well and “spoke the same language.”
Thanks to their proactive approach and clear communication, Intercept managed to establish a strong collaboration with Centric. Ster appreciated not only Intercept’s independence but also their ability to continuously engage with Centric. This ensured the smooth progress of the project.
The trust between the parties is now so strong that, according to Ster, Intercept employee Fabian could easily put on a “Ster jacket” and fully integrate into their working methods.
The result:
Intercept designed and implemented the entire infrastructure for Starlight 2.0, including networking, security, and a landing zone on Azure. This solid and flexible foundation enabled Centric’s developers to efficiently build their code. The initial results were impressive: the system proved to be technically robust, scalable, and reliable.
Ster was so pleased with the approach that they decided to migrate all future projects to Azure in the same way. The Starlight project not only delivered a new sales system but also established a modern foundation for the future of Ster’s IT.
As Ster lacked the required expertise internally, they decided to hire it externally. This also made Ster a DevOps client of Intercept. For the first time, Ster outsourced the monitoring and optimisation of their systems. Intercept remains involved, ensuring uptime and performance, and is able to respond quickly to new requests or expansions.
This project is an example of how good collaboration, trust, and expertise lead to sustainable innovation.