Crosskey – the first Finnish company to join the exclusive customer advising council LUG

Large User Group (LUG), is a well-established entity after almost 20 years in the market. As of today, LUG consists of 90 to 100 members worldwide. The unit is independently formed, owned and operated by member companies, consisting of 7 board members.  Crosskey is proud to have been chosen to join this council.

Crosskey in LUG

‍IBM Finland invited Crosskey to join LUG, making Crosskey the 1^st company from Finland and 3^rd company in the Nordic region to join in.
Crosskey is counted as an average size company for LUG, consisting of large systems with modest personnel. Maciej Sadowski, client manager of IBM Finland, describes it as “Crosskey will fit in beautifully”.

LUG is looking forward to future growth, however there are multiple requirements to be fulfilled in order of becoming a member. After an application is made, it takes around one month to process if the member request is eligible for this entity. Some of the considered requirements are of the following:

• A significant number of partitions and servers are being managed
• High Availability and Disaster Recovery infrastructure is in place
• Adoption of newer technologies is evident
• Mutual benefit will be received by both the prospective member and the LUG

Nonetheless, LUG wants members that are interesting companies – striving for development and innovation.

Long Term Commitment

‍Most of the people who join tend to stay, which is proof of how LUG genuinely values their members. “A few leave after a couple of years, they are just in it to absorb the information then leave, however the majority stays for many years” says  Lynne Benedict, Director of Operations and Administration at LUG.
Benedict adds: “30% of LUG members are non-US based, and we have always enjoyed new international collaborations”.

The Mindset

‍There are three mantras that LUG consistently uses: Listen Understand Guide.
LUG encourage members to actively participate in discussions, conversations both in strategy and work groups. There are three annual meet ups, where LUG alongside IBM meets up to discuss and share ideas and issues, finding common solutions. An exclusive group like this must meet a security standard, meaning no sensitive company information is used. They encourage members to share their issues that are decisive to the company – information on installation rather than company secrets. “These are opportunities that new members should take advantage of,” says Benedict.

For more information about LUG visit: https://www.the-lug.com/home.html

‍

Contact

Michael Linde
Product Manager, Infrastructure, Operations
michael.linde@crosskey.fi
+358 457 343 3731