In the highly competitive retail industry, rapid growth through acquisitions is a key strategy for market expansion. However, integrating newly acquired stores efficiently while maintaining operational stability presents significant challenges. 

One major retail company, known for its aggressive acquisition strategy, faced mounting difficulties in scaling its IT infrastructure. Traditionally, they deployed on-premises IBM Power-based systems at each store to run point-of-sale (POS) and store-level workloads. This approach was slow, costly, and logistically complex, significantly delaying the integration of new locations. 

Each acquisition required extensive on-site hardware deployment, leading to: 

• High capital expenditures for purchasing and maintaining physical systems. 

• Delays in bringing new stores online, impacting revenue and customer experience. 

• Operational inefficiencies, as IT teams had to manually set up and configure each system. 

With an ever-growing pipeline of acquisitions, the company needed a modern, scalable solution to streamline store deployment, reduce costs, and accelerate growth. 

Action 

GlassHouse Systems (GHS) provided a cloud-first solution, leveraging IBM Cloud Power Virtual Server to transform the company’s IT infrastructure. Instead of deploying physical systems at each store, GHS enabled the company to centrally manage all store workloads in the IBM Cloud. 

Key aspects of the solution included: 

• Automated Cloud Deployments: Using Logical Partitions (LPARs) on IBM Cloud, GHS automated store deployment at an unprecedented pace—30 stores every 10 minutes. 

• Cost Optimization: The cloud-based model reduced deployment costs to just a few hundred dollars per store per month, a fraction of the previous on-premises expenses. 

• Faster Time-to-Market: Instead of weeks-long deployments, new stores could be fully operational in minutes, enabling seamless integration into the corporate IT environment. 

In addition, GlassHouse Systems implemented a robust Disaster Recovery (DR) solution to protect mission-critical operations: 

• Primary production workloads were migrated to IBM Cloud in Dallas. 

• DR infrastructure was established in Washington, leveraging Global Replication Services (GRS) for near real-time asynchronous replication. 

• Minimal downtime risk, with very short RPO and RTO, ensuring seamless failover in case of disruptions. 

To further enhance operational efficiency, GHS also delivered managed services, including: 

• 24/7 monitoring and proactive infrastructure management. 

• Disaster recovery testing and continuous optimization. 

• Security and compliance enforcement to safeguard customer and transactional data. 

Business Outcome 

By replacing its fragmented, hardware-intensive IT model with a cloud-based, fully automated solution, this retail company unlocked unparalleled scalability, cost savings, and agility: 

• Rapid Store Expansion: The ability to deploy new stores in minutes provided a significant competitive edge in acquisitions. Faster integration meant faster revenue generation from new locations.
• Cost Efficiency: The cloud-first approach slashed IT infrastructure costs, reducing capital expenditures and shifting to a more predictable operational cost model.
• Acquisition Advantage: The ability to integrate stores faster and at lower costs made the company a stronger bidder in M&A negotiations, outmaneuvering competitors.
• Business Continuity: With IBM Cloud-based disaster recovery, the company achieved near-instant failover capabilities, ensuring uninterrupted service.
• Operational Focus: By offloading infrastructure management to GHS, internal teams focused on business growth rather than IT maintenance. 

GlassHouse Systems empowered this retail leader to scale faster, reduce complexity, and maintain operational excellence—ensuring that every acquisition fueled growth instead of slowing it down. 

Now equipped with a flexible, resilient, and scalable IT foundation, this company is poised for continued expansion and industry leadership.

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