Founder and Managing Director
Andreas Pelzner
Managing Director of WE SUCCESS Consulting GmbH, Stuttgart. Board member, CIO and entrepreneur with more than 25 years of responsibility for public-sector IT organisations – architect of the merger that created Komm.ONE and adviser on digital transformation, sovereignty and artificial intelligence in public administration.
Topics
Profile
Transformation. Operational stability. Impact.
Andreas Pelzner leads large, politically complex transformations – from mergers and new set-ups to scaling – and turns them into stable, financially viable operating models.
For more than 25 years he has been responsible for organisations with up to 2,200 employees and more than €370 million in revenue – eleven of those years as Chief Executive Officer and board member of large public-law IT service providers. As the architect of the merger of four organisations into Komm.ONE, he delivered lasting synergies of more than €50 million a year, measurably improved service quality and kept certifications stable throughout the transformation. He has put federal digitalisation strategies such as the Online Access Act (OZG), Register Modernisation and the Germany Stack into operation within Germany's federal IT structures.
His strength: consistently aligning people, structures and systems with a shared goal – while safeguarding governance, compliance and operational excellence. He combines decisive strategic judgement with delivery discipline and a strong ability to manage stakeholders in political and association settings.
After an apprenticeship as an industrial mechanic at Bayer AG, he studied mechanical engineering with a specialisation in aerospace engineering at FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences and began his career at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This was followed by twelve years as an entrepreneur in e-business, leadership of IT operations at regio iT, the chairmanship of the Executive Board of Datenzentrale Baden-Württemberg and seven years on the Executive Board of Komm.ONE. Since October 2025, he has been advising public-law IT service providers and public administrations through WE SUCCESS on mergers, federal cooperation models and strategic questions of digital transformation – increasingly focusing on digital sovereignty and the practical use of artificial intelligence.
What drives him: a public administration that acts with digital sovereignty instead of managing dependencies. He regularly shares his observations on LinkedIn and on the WE SUCCESS blog.
Career
From aerospace engineer to board member – and on to consulting
since 10/2025
Managing Director · WE SUCCESS Consulting GmbH, Stuttgart
Executive Advisory
Advising public-law data centres and their stakeholders on potential mergers, federal cooperation models and strategic questions of digital transformation – with a growing focus on digital sovereignty and the practical use of artificial intelligence.
07/2018 – 10/2025
Member of the Executive Board · Komm.ONE AöR, Stuttgart
Post-merger integration and scaling
Overall responsibility for a market-oriented service and product portfolio with full P&L accountability (€370 million revenue) and for the strategic development of operations, application development, product management, sales and account management, business development, service and support, and innovation. Led around 1,100 employees; scaled the organisation from 1,650 to 2,200 employees as part of the post-merger integration. Additional mandates: Supervisory Board of ProVitako eG, Managing Director of EVG GmbH.
- More than €50 million in annual savings from the merger – duplication eliminated, processes, products and services harmonised
- Process landscape harmonised, silos dismantled, a central governance structure established; IT architecture rebuilt from monolithic to modular
- SLA quality improved for the long term, contractual penalties cut by 70%; service and support rebuilt around competence centres, customer satisfaction up 35%
- Stable certifications throughout the transformation – as a framework for stability, not compliance overhead
- State-wide data hub connected to Germany's Register Modernisation programme developed and scaled; AI-based enhancements to the core applications; new lines of business in AI, environment and smart city
- Strong political acceptance through close cooperation with the state government, local authorities and local-government associations; Supervisory Board consistently involved; a change culture with actively engaged employees
10/2014 – 06/2018
Chief Executive Officer · Datenzentrale Baden-Württemberg AöR
Architect of Germany's largest public-sector IT merger
Led DZBW (240 employees, €37 million revenue) and held overall responsibility for designing and executing the merger of three municipal data centres (KIVBF, KDRS, KIRU) with DZBW to form Komm.ONE AöR on 1 July 2018.
- Brought together four organisations with different cultures, operating models and stakeholder landscapes in a stable integration
- Kept operations stable across all four organisations during the merger, secured SLA compliance and avoided customer losses
- Established the merger programme's governance structure, which became the foundation of Komm.ONE; selected the management team within the programme
- Built and maintained political backing despite potential resistance – in continuous consultation with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance, the local-government associations, the Administrative Board, districts and municipalities
06/2008 – 09/2014
CIO, Technical Director and authorised signatory (Prokurist) · regio iT GmbH, Aachen
Data centre modernised, quality raised, costs reduced
Head of IT operations and service with 125 staff; authorised signatory (Prokurist) from 2012.
- Introduced an organisational and operational IT factory
- Established service level management and IT service management based on ITIL V3 and ISO 20000
- Built a new data centre and cut operating costs by 30%
1996 – 2008
Managing Partner · AixVision GmbH
Pioneering work in e-commerce
Founded and ran an IT service provider focused on e-business, networks and systems engineering.
- Delivered more than 250 e-commerce projects
- Operated an in-house data centre with a class C network, 200 servers and more than 2,000 domains
- Ran the server infrastructure of Germany's largest second-hand bookseller justbooks.de – until its acquisition by abebooks.com
- Rolled out Office applications at NATO in Brussels
1992 – 1996
Graduate engineer (Dipl.-Ing.) · German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Space launch systems
Preliminary analysis of space launch systems; member of the ESA-funded TRANSYS project team, responsible for analysing the thermal protection systems.
Education
- Dipl.-Ing. (FH) in Mechanical Engineering / Aerospace Engineering, FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences
- Training as a business coach
- Apprenticeship as an industrial mechanic, Bayer AG
Further training
- 2025 – Business Continuity Manager (DGI)
- 2012 – Business Administration for Managing Directors
- 2007 – Certified Data Centre Manager
- 1997 – Consultant training programme, information modelling, structured analysis
Personal
Fluent in English for negotiations, basic French. Hockey player (2nd Bundesliga, youth international, several-time German youth champion), sailor, keen traveller.
Insights by Andreas Pelzner
Latest posts
The year’s dumbest hackers come unstuck on a 90-year-old firewall and the Caps Lock key
My neighbour knows I do “something with computers”. So when a fake Microsoft pop-up appeared, she called the number on the screen …
Read more → LinkedIn postAn Airbus for Europe’s digital economy – the case for a European digital consortium
For years I have been carrying around an idea I kept putting off: a paper making the case for a European “Digital Airbus” consortium …
Read more → LinkedIn postHow do we get started with AI quickly – without making ourselves dependent all over again?
I am being asked this more and more in the public sector and by mid-sized businesses – because the pressure AI is putting on society is palpable …
Read more →