Welcome to UPONU:
Our new Managing Director introduces himself

Frank Schmidt has recently joined the UPONU team as Managing Director. This is important news for our customers, partners, and future colleagues – after all, it's about trust, perspectives, and continuity. A good reason to get to know him better: Who is Frank Schmidt? What drives him? And what can you expect from him?

I'm Frank Schmidt, 38 years old, married, and live in a blended family with my wife, a stepson, and a daughter. I completed training as an industrial clerk and am an economic psychologist (M.Sc.). I have worked for a long time in international business development, particularly in the Asian region (India, Southeast Asia), and have experience in various strategic functions.

I've always been particularly drawn to interface functions that involve combining technical expertise with business approaches to derive and implement strategic decisions.

The strategic approach convinced me from the start: A clear focus on the mid-market, combined with the ambition to make complex IT infrastructures so available, secure, and usable that they create real added value for our customers.

At the same time, it was also the personal contact with the people involved that gave me the good feeling of being in the right place. The open exchange, the shared understanding of sustainable development, and professional collaboration on equal terms quickly showed me: This is a team I enjoy working with – and for which I want to take responsibility.

For me, the focus is on positioning our company so that our customers can rely on us long-term – technologically, professionally, and personally. We already offer a strong portfolio with scalable, highly available solutions. I see my task as further sharpening this profile and communicating it clearly – especially for decision-makers who aren't deeply involved in IT.

Beyond that, it's important to me to expand our role as a strategic partner. Many customers want more than pure product consulting – they're looking for guidance and impulses for fundamental decisions. When we address this need with genuine consulting competence and a holistic approach, we secure sustainable customer relationships – and clearly distinguish ourselves from the market.

UPONU has achieved incredible growth in recent years – in revenue, employee numbers, and product portfolio. That's a very good thing, but it also creates more complexity. Therefore, it's very important that we meet these new challenges with ongoing professionalization and consistent optimization of our process landscape.

As a structure-oriented personality, it's important to me that we represent a shaping, future-oriented role – to ensure sustainable growth for tomorrow, starting today.

Last but not least, it's very important to me to be available as a personal contact and sparring partner for our customers and our own team.

Our customers find themselves in a world full of uncertainties. For most companies, the strategy until recently was, for example, to obtain managed services through one of the large American hyperscalers. The political uncertainties of the present now require a completely different evaluation of options and new strategic approaches with hybrid cloud models. As a company that has been operating sovereign cloud models "Made in Germany" for over 15 years, we support our customers in this process and work together to develop a hybrid cloud landscape as part of the medium-term IT strategy.

In addition to political uncertainties, companies are also currently economically challenged. We are the strategic sparring partner when it comes to realizing efficiencies in IT operations, creating capacity for innovation, and addressing the skilled labor shortage. Innovative AI solutions are also becoming increasingly relevant for us and our customers. We are currently testing various solutions in our own operations, with which we want to support our customers in the near future.

UPONU stands for an outstanding performance culture with a self-motivated team. Our team is aware of how important our actions are for our customers' success and proactively takes on this responsibility. That's what makes the company so special for me and is the source of our company's success.

In daily interaction, honesty and transparency are particularly important to me. This applies both to interaction within the company and with customers. Problems can always be solved when they've been spoken about. As a learning organization, this means for us that we all pull together to eliminate a challenge and at the same time set the necessary course to be prepared for future challenges.

My great passion is music and everything related to it. I've been playing guitar and bass since I was ten years old, and I've been active in bands since my youth. Currently, I'm living out my hobby as a guitarist with "Prom Queens." Beyond that, I also deal with music production, sound engineering, and many other topics around music.

I also have a small collection of old Nintendo consoles along with associated games at home – though due to lack of time, these are used very, very rarely.

I'm aware that the team has been confronted with many changes and unforeseen challenges in recent months. Even though I've only been indirectly involved so far, I'd first like to say thank you for the extraordinary commitment of the entire team. The personal commitment of each individual makes the difference and ensures that UPONU can grow from its challenges.

We have a strong team, an attractive solution portfolio, and a state-of-the-art data center in a market that is currently changing massively in our favor. That's a huge opportunity that we now need to seize!

Thank you for the conversation – we look forward to the journey together with you at the helm of UPONU!