Disruption can be crippling for a food service supply chain company, especially one that serves more than 10,000 franchise stores in the United States. To help its stores serve its patrons smoothly, reliability and speed are essential.

Both were sometimes difficult to achieve. The company’s on-premises server provider was experiencing far more outages than it should have, which created one challenge after another for the 24/7 operation.

Ultimately, the company was experiencing outages from time to time. A lot was at stake: An average of 2,500 orders are filled per day, each one involving between 80 and 100 items. Having its fulfillment website down was a tremendous business risk: No portal meant no orders, and with no orders, there’s nothing to ship. Everything froze.

The company knew something had to change. Besides the outage problem of its current suite of on-premises servers, it also had been working with outdated architecture with multiple service providers. Various levels of OS, DB, and SAP applications needed to be aligned and upgraded.

From security, compliance, and risk perspectives, the company needed a more holistic system environment that, above all else, offered protection against unexpected disruptions, kept deliveries flowing, and ultimately kept franchises happy.