The Zaragoza-based company is dedicated to the design, implementation and operation of IT infrastructures, cybersecurity and digital identity management.
It has partners and clients such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google or IBM, and was one of the companies invited to The Wave, the Government of Aragon’s Tech Expo.
With a turnover of ten million euros expected for 2024 and with national and international partners and clients such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Dell, IBM and Oracle, the Aragonese company Nologin faces a future in which the area of cybersecurity will play a relevant role. A company, born from the union of the talent and concerns of three engineers who met at the School of Engineering and Architecture of Zaragoza, is dedicated to the design, implementation and operation of IT infrastructures, cybersecurity and digital identity management. Under the slogan ‘passion to create, passion to serve’, Nologin is committed to the solidity that has provided them with organic growth, a strength that has allowed them, according to Jorge Marco, COO of the company, to grow during the economic crises with which the company has lived during its 25 years of existence. A weight that, says the COO, offers stability not only to his staff, but also to customers who see Nologin as an efficient, reliable and stable partner.
“The core of what we do is the design, implementation and subsequent operation of IT infrastructures, both in the client’s Datacenters and in the Cloud. If the client has it in the Cloud, we can carry out migration projects, or implement new solutions, or make a hybrid management between their systems and the cloud,” explains Nologin’s director of operations. The company, which was born and has grown in Aragon, has as another of its business axes this same activity “but oriented to cybersecurity: to operate, analyze, design and manage cybersecurity elements that our clients may have. The third area of work we have is the management of digital identities (the control of an employee when he/she enters or leaves a large company and all that this entails in terms of the process of signing up and leaving and having the management under control). For a large company, to give an example, such as BBVA, it is essential, because the entries and exits are continuous and cannot be done by hand,” says the COO.
At present, Nologin has around 115 employees, eighty of whom work from its headquarters in Zaragoza, while the rest of the workforce is distributed among Nologin’s offices in the rest of Spain and around the world, in countries such as the USA and Mexico. International headquarters from which they have set up Datacenters in countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia or Costa Rica. “Right now we are managing, for example, smart highways, both traffic, traffic management, and payment management, for Ferrovial in the U.S. We have been doing it since 2015, we have seven or eight highways. We also manage services for Indra in Panama and Canada,” says Jorge Marco. In Spain, at Nologin he works with Renfe and Catalonia Railways, and runs the Security Operations Center (SOC) for Balearia or Orange. “All this from here, from Zaragoza,” he points out. “With the Government of Aragon we have worked continuously for more than ten years on different projects, from e-mail management to identity management (which we continue to do), or the management of its entire infrastructure,” he explains. The Zaragoza-based company has also carried out projects for the Directorate General of the Civil Guard, various Spanish government ministries, Pepephone and Caser Seguros, among other clients.
Cybersecurity, the main current challenge
The company, which closed the 2023 financial year with a turnover of more than eight million euros, expects this turnover to exceed ten million euros in 2024. Growth forecasts on which the company sets itself new challenges every year. “Right now we’re really boosting the cybersecurity part. It is not the sexiest part of technology, but it is something transversal for any company, everyone needs it and it is not yet given the importance it requires. It is only given the importance it requires when you are in trouble. There are many companies that do take it very seriously, large companies that are working hard on it,” says Jorge Marco.
The company maintains a sustained growth and has been awarded as Company of the Year in the 2013 edition of the Aragon Information Society Award. “As I was saying, what we work on is not the sexiest part of technology, that’s why it’s not usual for us to be in this kind of awards, it was a pride, to be given an award in your homeland without looking for it,” recalls the COO. An autonomous community that is committed to establishing itself as a European technology hub, as announced by the Government of Aragon in the framework of the Tech Expo The Wave. “It has been very important news, it is moving in a very coherent and excellent way. Both the current government and previous governments have been working hard to boost the entire sector, and now they are bearing fruit, both the news about Microsoft and Amazon. We have a lot of competitive advantages and with respect to others and that is now being enhanced and it is certainly a matter of believing it, it can be done,” he points out.
In addition, Nologin has built important international alliances, as Marco explains “we have agreements with all the big ones, both with Microsoft and Amazon, as well as with Google, at the cloud infrastructure level. But also with other manufacturers: with Dell, with Red Hat, with IBM, with Oracle. We try to offer a solution of advice, consultancy and implementation to the client of the technology that we believe is the most suitable for each client at each moment and at their level”.
No crisis as a company in 25 years of operation
Nologin was one of the technology companies invited to The Wave, the Government of Aragon’s Tech Expo, which was held on May 15 and 16 at the Palacio de Congresos in Zaragoza. A “very good experience, it is a congress that has been carried out in a very short time, and with an excellent form and background. A congress of this level is very difficult to achieve and to do, it is a brutal advance, it is very good for everyone in the sector. Giving all the visibility that was given to all types of companies, and all the projects that are developed from here, and putting them all together, gives a sense of strength and power to the sector that we didn’t have before”, says Jorge Marco. “The Wave was a clear example of where we have to go,” he says.
A breeding ground for companies like Nologin, which is based on a series of characteristics that the company shares with other companies in the sector. “Our competitive advantage with respect to other territories, such as the U.S., is that we are much more competitive. Being able to carry out high-level projects from here is tremendously competitive for clients. Having the necessary talent to be able to do it, which exists here, is another very important point to be able to maintain that competitiveness. And perhaps what is missing is that we cannot grow much because there is no possibility of generating a cushion of people to grow in such an abrupt way. Growth, as in our case, has to be very organic. In Nologin we have a growth that has been sustained over time, but very slow, both because of the sector and, in our case, because of our own decision. Deciding to grow organically, slowly and in an organized way, also allows us to have other advantages: stability for our employees, who know that the company will always continue to function well; stability for our customers, who see that there are no strange investments; and the possibility of facing crises in a much more relaxed way. In these 25 years of operation we have never had a crisis as a company. We have always had, regardless of any crisis, sustained and organic growth over time, both in terms of employees and turnover,” says Nologin’s COO.
Innovation, flexibility and passion, Nologin’s cornerstones
Nologin was born 25 years ago from the union of the talent of three engineers from Zaragoza. “The idea was to create a company from Zaragoza to work internationally,” recalls Marco. In fact, right from the start, Nologin tackled “high-level IT projects,” he explains. The company started out working for Sun Microsystems, a company later absorbed by Oracle. “From there it became what it is today. They started working and growing from Zaragoza, from their home,” he recalls. “Sun Microsystems gave us a series of values and ways of working as a big company that we still maintain today: innovation, flexibility, service orientation and passion for what you do. We were born with these American ways of working, brought to Zaragoza,” he explains. “It was a huge multinational, but it was very defined in terms of dynamism, R&D, collaborative, teamwork, creativity. It was a creator of solutions and implemented them. And that passion in the way we work, we have kept it as part of our DNA, to have that passion for the things we do, to do new things continuously, so that this is not a problem in the management of change,” he says.
A philosophy and work structures that have allowed them to face crises in a more than solvent way. “The pandemic, for example, did not affect us at all. Because of the way we work, the day it was declared that we had to leave the office, we took our computers, went home, closed the door and continued working the next day in exactly the same way,” he explains. A way of working based on results from the foundational origin, and in which self-management is one more element of value. “We have teams that are self-managed with a series of rules, processes and global tools, but each group is self-managed and self-controlled. Within general ground rules, but they have total freedom to do what they have to do. They have a series of clients to manage, and a series of results to achieve,” explains the COO. A way of working in which “it’s no longer just about talent. The point is that you need them to have a passion for what they do, it’s a question of aptitude and attitude. And those people are the ones who stay with the company on an ongoing basis,” he says.
At Nologin, two types of professional profiles are needed: one branch comes from Computer Engineering and Telecommunications, and the other from professional training, in Systems Administration. “We like people to be able to stay with us for as long as possible. For that what we need is that we are really both comfortable, that both the company and the employees feel comfortable. It’s give and take. That’s why we look for people who are passionate about it, who really like it. In fact, our company motto is ‘passion to create, passion to serve’,” he says.
Now Systems, Nologin’s Spin Off dedicated to oceanography
In addition to IT infrastructures, cybersecurity and identity management, the core of the company, the Zaragoza-based company also leads the Now Systems project, “a spin-off of Nologin. We were in charge of infrastructure management for Puertos del Estado, in the Ministry of Public Works. We were in charge of all their supercomputing systems as system administrators. And from there we had the opportunity not only to manage the systems, but also to develop the models that ran on those systems, which were oceanographic prediction models to manage and control, based on different parameters, the predictions that come out in the weather information. It is a service that was not so much for system administrators or engineers, but rather it required mathematicians, physicists and people with knowledge in oceanography. Now Systems has grown a lot, now it is an entity in itself, with fifteen employees doing exclusively this type of prediction systems. For multiple utilities, both for the Mar Menor and for the entire Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts… things a little different from what we usually do”. Now Systems provides services to public administrations all over Europe”, he concludes.
