Courbon Software goes SaaS with Axians
Courbon Software, a production management software editor, has moved from customer hosting to a cloud mode. Axians has accompanied it in this move by responding to the challenges of security and availability.
MES, three small letters that represent a big stake for industrialists. The Manufacturing Execution System, or production control software, covers the entire industrial chain, from the reception of raw materials to labeling. A MES thus ensures production follow-up, product traceability or machine performance measurement.
A key player in this market, Courbon Software publishes two solutions, one dedicated to the food, chemical and manufacturing industry Producim, the other to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and cosmetics industry Pharmacim.
Until then, this VINCI Energies editor had been offering its solutions exclusively in “on-premise” mode. This own hosting was preferred for technical reasons and lack of market maturity.
Le déclic du changement d’approche est intervenu en 2020 avec un appel d’offre remporté auprès de Labeyrie Fine Foods. Le groupe agroalimentaire, qui commercialise les marques Labeyrie, Blini ou Delpierre, souhaitait un hébergement hybride voire en mode SaaS pour l’ensemble de ses usines.
Labeyrie Fine Foods wanted to relieve its IT teams of the operation, monitoring, backup and maintenance of the solution,” recalls Bernard Durand, sales engineer at Courbon Software. As our solutions are already full web-based, with no client to install on the workstation, the switch to SaaS (software as a service) mode was facilitated. »
SaaS premium
To “upgrade its offers in the cloud”, Courbon Software called on another VINCI Energies company. Specialized in ICT solutions, Axians responded to the challenges of cybersecurity, availability (rate higher than 99.9%) and business continuity with data replication on remote site. Axians has also guaranteed processor and memory capacities that can be increased as needed.
The shared offer made it possible to combine access to the application, hosting, updates and application support in a single subscription. “The customer has only one contact person,” Bernard Durand points out.
The offer differs from the traditional SaaS mode, where companies all use the same application and are forced to upgrade to a new version by the publisher. Courbon Software offers a “premium” approach to SaaS. Each customer has its own application version and its own database without having a versioning policy imposed on it, and above all without having to isolate its own data.
For an MES that interacts with different automation and business applications, the stability of the platform is essential,” says the Courbon Software sales engineer. Any change in version implies multiplying the non-regression tests.
The objective is also to create a “core model” (basic model) to respond to all the use cases observed at its customer Labeyrie Fine Foods. The production lines that process duck or smoked salmon, as is the case on the pilot site, do not have the same constraints. The project, which will be spread over several years, will be rolled out to a dozen of the French group’s plants.
