We would be unable to provide food to our community without access to our data centers, which were at risk of being destroyed. We had one meeting [with Meridian and Skytap] and the next day our systems were being migrated.
Greg Hay
Group Technology Operations and IT Executive
The Client
With over 13,000 stores worldwide and over 2,000 stores in South Africa, SPAR is the world’s leading voluntary food retail chain. At the core of SPAR’s mission is its dedication to consistency and close co-operation of its retailers and wholesalers at a local level. In South Africa alone, SPAR connects the country’s 58 million residents with the best quality products at affordable prices.
Business Impact
Thanks to the immediate response from cloud migration experts at Meridian and Skytap, SPAR’s 10 business-critical IBM i LPARs were quickly and remotely migrated to Skytap on Azure. Using a combination of Commvault 1-touch for IBM i and live replication, SPAR now has an instantaneous failover recovery point in Azure so it can rest assured that no emergency or disaster will stop it from delivering a world class shopping experience to its customers. With its IBM Power Systems running on Skytap on Azure, SPAR can continue to modernize its workloads and advance its digital transformation strategy. Thanks to a successful migration, SPAR is now able to operationalize the expenditure for the DR zone and only pay for what is actually used.
Meridian fits into our team seamlessly. They’re IBM Power Systems and Commvault experts and they know these systems inside and out.
Seán Hadfield
Support Specialist
The Challenges
When civil unrest erupted in South Africa, SPAR found itself in a precarious situation. The food suppliers in the country were directly threatened, including SPAR’s data center operations. SPAR’s engineers had no physical access to the data center and its mission critical IBM Power Systems. SPAR was looking to minimize the risk to its operations, and engaged Meridian to immediately begin migrating its IBM Power Systems workloads from the on-prem data center to Skytap on Azure. Since SPAR was unable to access their local data center, this migration had to be managed remotely. SPAR’s environment was at risk and without an immediate response, SPAR was in danger of losing its data, connection to its stores, and its ability to supply products to its customers across South Africa.
How Meridian Helped
Meridian and Skytap quickly deployed their expert engineers along with Meridian project management to develop a unique solution to address SPAR’s challenges. Leveraging Meridian’s mProtect Flex™powered by Commvault, along with the standardized cloud migration processes from Meridian’s mPowerCloud Migration Factory™, the team quickly and successfully migrated 10 LPARs from its IBM Power Systems to Skytap on Azure.
It was definitely a high-pressure scenario. We were worried about our retailers, we worried about the communities we serve, we worried about the team, and their families. What was great is we had a partner in Meridian who was able to translate that pressure and take some of the load off of us.
Greg Hay
Group Technology Operations and IT Executive
Related Videos
- 01 - SPAR: Case Study 2:49
- 02 - SPAR: Meridian Brings Deep Expertise and Skills 0:44
- 03 - SPAR: Meridian and Skytap’s Partnership 0:49
- 04 - SPAR: What Keeps Me Up At Night 0:50
- 05 - SPAR: Zero Downtime to the Business 0:44
- 06 - SPAR: We Have Partners We Can Trust 0:49
- 07 - SPAR: Meridian Took the Pressure Off of Us 0:48
- 08 - SPAR: Our Partners Were Working 24/7 0:50
- 09 - SPAR: Benefits of a Flexible Consumption Model 0:44
- 10 - SPAR: Timeliness Was Key 0:37
- 11 - SPAR: Our Cloud Journey with Legacy Systems 0:39
- 12 - SPAR: Our Responsibility to Our Communities 1:01
- 13 - SPAR: We Trust Meridian’s Migration Factory 0:50
