Key Challenges
- With 50 national retail, grocery, liquor and hardware store locations at the edge of the network, downtime had to be minimized to avoid potential disruptions for its customer base.
- Small IT team of five - without IT staff available on-site at its national retail store locations, they needed a highly reliable edge computing infrastructure that can be clustered for high availability and managed remotely with ease for its multi-location business model at the edge.
- Previous IT infrastructure did not meet Jerry’s Food’s backup and support requirements, as it was costly, unreliable, and difficult.
Business Benefits
- Simplified IT infrastructure and edge computing strategy with maximum uptime, easy remote management, connectivity and reliability.
- Experienced an estimated 50% decrease on the time spent managing IT infrastructure.
- Reduced its cost per instance by 50% over a five year time period, as compared to previous legacy virtualization systems.
- Rapid, trouble-free implementation and deployment.
- Reported major improvements to its DVR security camera system rollout, for its multi-grocery store location model.
Jerry’s Foods
Founded in 1947 at Grandview Market in Edina, Minnesota by Jerry Paulsen, Jerry’s Foods, a national grocery store chain that includes Cub Foods, County Market, and Save-A-Lot, has a unique commitment to the customer and a strong history of excellence. For over 50 years, Jerry’s Foods has remained an integral part of their neighborhood, focused on being purposeful, family-focused and serving the smart shopper.
Jerry’s Foods has 50 national retail, grocery, liquor and hardware store locations in the United States within Minnesota and Florida. With customer service as its top priority, Jerry’s Foods was in need of a modern business solution capable of keeping pace with the advances in technology, while remaining high-performing, self-healing, simple to manage and able to scale for future demands.
IT Challenges – The Essential Need for Uptime at the Edge
Before choosing Scale Computing, Jerry’s Foods was using a legacy virtualization system for its IT infrastructure, which was found to be costly, unreliable, and difficult to operate and manage. With only five full IT team members, and no IT staff on-site at its many grocery store locations, Jerry’s Foods needed a solution that could be clustered for high availability, managed remotely with ease, and have the computing power needed for on-site applications.
We used to have a legacy virtualization system as our backup strategy, but it didn’t work very well. Now we have Scale Computing, which works extremely well. Our corporate and remote locations have a backup location that we can failover to, and within a minute it can be turned on and brought up right away. It is safe to say I am sleeping better at night.— Jeff Miller, Director of IT at Jerry’s Foods
Scale Computing HE100 Series – Introduction, Selection and Implementation
The process of evaluating and selecting Scale Computing Platform was based on a previous interaction with Scale Computing co-founders, Jeff Ready and Jason Collier at the Midmarket CIO Conference. “I was blown away by the simplicity and functionality of SC//Platform that I almost signed a PO on the spot,” recalls Miller.
With Scale Computing, Jerry’s Foods has expanded its previous IT infrastructure at a fraction of the cost and now runs 70 virtual machines at the corporate office. Jerry’s Foods also has thirteen additional four-node systems, and a three-node mini-system deployed at seven of their stores. The goal is to keep adding to these systems in order to eventually replace all of Jerry’s Foods’ previous servers in every one of its retail store locations and corporate office.
Scale Computing’s ability to deliver excellent levels of reliability and service for each of its multi-grocery store locations at the edge of the network was vital. “With no IT staff on-site, and with potential downtime costing us varying amounts reaching into the tens of thousands of dollars, downtime is not an option for us. I was blown away by the simplicity and functionality of Scale Computing Platform, which works extremely well. Our corporate and remote locations have a backup location that we can fail over to, and within a minute and it can be turned on and brought up right away. It is safe to say I am sleeping better at night,” Miller continued.
With Scale Computing’s assistance, SC//Platform was deployed and implemented quickly in under two weeks, with edge computing, server, storage, virtualization, and disaster recovery in a single solution. “Everything has been a positive experience,” said Miller. “SC//Platform changed a lot of things for us at Jerry’s Foods. The implementation of the HE100 Series ended up allowing us to rearchitect our whole in-store strategy. It’s given me headaches in other areas because I did not plan to allocate that many resources this quickly. It makes too much sense.”
With no IT staff on-site, and with potential downtime costing us varying amounts reaching into the tens of thousands of dollars, downtime is not an option for us. With food stamps being a large part of our business model, we need 100% uptime and connectivity to be used. If this does not happen, it impacts our customers tremendously."— Jeff Miller, Director of IT at Jerry’s Foods
Edge Computing Benefits – Wide Ranging and High Impact
With only five full IT team members, and no IT staff on-site at its many grocery store locations, Jerry’s Foods needed a solution that could be clustered for high availability, managed remotely with ease, and have the computing power needed for on-site applications. Jerry’s Foods turned to Scale Computing for enterprise-class features that could be deployed quickly, managed locally and remotely, and provide self-healing technology to provide Jerry’s Foods with almost instant failover and minimal downtime.
After implementing SC//Platform, Jerry’s Foods has reported maximum uptime and connectivity, which has proved crucial for the reliability of business critical systems like point of sales, electronic customer loyalty programs, and electronic benefit transfer (EBT). As part of its backup strategy, Jerry’s Foods turned to Scale Computing for its backup strategy, leveraging the HyperCore™ Data Protection Suite.
Scale Computing’s emphasis on delivering market-leading levels of customer support has helped Jerry’s Foods throughout the pre and post implementation process. Scale Computing views our Support and Service as an extension of its products. As Miller explains, “With Scale Computing, the support has been great. I even call them regularly to test them and they have always been helpful.”
With SC//Platform, Jerry’s Foods now has an edge computing infrastructure that provides peace of mind for running on-site applications reliably, while still being easy to operate for a lean IT team.