Jotun is one of the world's leading paints and coatings manufacturers, combining the best quality with constant innovation and creativity. For almost a century, Jotun have protected all types of property - from iconic buildings to beautiful homes. The Norwegian multinational chemicals company has 38 production facilities in 23 countries, 67 companies in 47 countries, and has been represented in over 100 countries worldwide.

There were three critical challenges faced by Jotun, including:

• Cross-border data transfer requirements: For centralized management of its IT operations in Mainland China, Jotun needed access to ERP, CRM, and other business-critical applications based in its headquarters in Norway. However, Jotun's current infrastructure couldn’t meet the needs of the business. Jotun was looking for a partner who is experienced in complying with national information security standards.

• Support for cloudification of core apps: Jotun was looking to move its core applications and workloads to the cloud. It needed a partner that can help them navigate such modernization seamlessly and offer powerful disaster recovery capabilities with reduced technical risks and optimized costs.

• Lack of multi-region, multi-security global corporate network: Jotun faced a 40% decline in its cross-region network performance due to disruption of ocean cables and lack of international backup lines. This negatively impacted Jotun’s business operations and user experience. Operating and maintaining an on-premise global enterprise network was time-consuming and required specialized know-how to ensure high network availability, scalability, and disaster recovery.

As a result, Jotun needed a partner that could offer quick deployment of a globally interconnected low-latency and compliant network to enable high-quality business communication across multiple geographic locations and ensure service continuity without any potential network interruptions.

Alibaba Cloud comes with a deep understanding of the complexities and opportunities in the Chinese market, which helps MNCs move beyond the everyday challenges of expanding in Mainland China.

Alibaba Cloud provided the highest standard of consulting support, comprehensive cross-border data transfer solution, personal information protection (PIPL), and comprehensive attestations and certification coverage for cybersecurity to help Jotun built a high-speed cross-region network, which helped connect its core businesses worldwide with high elasticity and high-quality networking. Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud offered end-to-end professional cloud migration services and extensive technical support to deploy Jotun's core applications to the cloud successfully.

As a result, Jotun saw a 25% improvement in its overall network performance, a 32% improvement in core applications performance, and a 28% drop in its overall expenses.

Alibaba Cloud leveraged Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN), Smart Access Gateway (SmartAG), and VPN Gateway to provide global network coverage with ultra-low latency and high-transmission speed. CEN’s redundancy-based solution performed automatic network optimization, ensuring uninterrupted service and high availability. SmartAG provided higher reliability supported by multi-level disaster recovery design of devices, links, and access. VPN Gateway offered Internet Key Exchange (IKE), IPsec, and SSL to guarantee the security and reliability of data transmission.

Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud’s Global Accelerator (GA) helped solve cross-domain network problems by monitoring the status of active business applications and automatically scheduling user traffic to ensure service continuity and improved network performance.

To meet its disaster recovery demands for core applications on the cloud, Jotun leveraged Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service (OSS), a durable and high-performing storage solution that helps store, backup, and retrieve data from anywhere worldwide. CloudMonitor helped keep track of the overall application infrastructure's usage, health, and availability with a real-time intuitive dashboard to help quickly recover critical systems in case of an emergency or outage. Its Anti-DDoS cybersecurity solution further helped mitigate potential cybersecurity attacks and protect sensitive user data and business applications.

Alibaba Cloud helped Jotun meet its heavy cross-region network demands, promote the digital transformation of its business in Mainland China, and compliance with Chinese data protection laws. In the future, Jotun plans to build a robust Alibaba Cloud and Jotun Global Cloud Strategic Cooperation Framework to promote the digitization and growth of businesses in Asia. It also plans to build a global SD-WAN network and security management system with technical support and services from Alibaba Cloud.

Moreover, Jotun wants to leverage Alibaba Cloud’s rich industry experience and powerful data analytics capabilities to gain insight into customer demands and drive efficient business decisions.