PGA TOUR Superstore already has several high-tech customer tools and applications, but now it is also planning a major e-commerce expansion. Their IT partner, CompliancePoint, Inc., has been helping them accomplish all of this through enterprise using VMware and HPE storage solutions.

Michael Anderson, director of IT at the PGA TOUR Superstore, and Michael Boone, VP of Information Technology Solutions at CompliancePoint, sat down with John Furrier (@furrier) and John Walls (@johnwalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during VMworld in Las Vegas to discuss how the two companies are working together to meet the ambitious IT needs of the growing retailer.

The partnership

PGA TOUR Superstore operates 26 large stores nationwide that employ a number of high-tech features targeted at customers. In addition to golf simulators and virtual practice spaces that have the capability to record customer swings, the company also has the standard e-commerce features of retailers its size, such as point-of-sale terminals and an international website, all of which require 24-7 uptime. As an IT solutions partner, the company chose CompliancePoint, who it felt had the experience to help them manage and expand its IT infrastructure.

“What we try to bring to the table is the fact that we don’t only work with golf-related retailers,” explained Boone. “We work in other verticals, we do a lot of healthcare and some other verticals, and we are exposed to a lot of technology and a lot of solutions that fit similar problems.”

Vast improvement in backup and recovery efficiency

Having already used HP EVA storage array for a number of years, PGA TOUR Superstore decided to upgrade to an HPE 3PAR enterprise storage system running VMware. However, its nightly backups were taking upwards of 24 to 30 hours, according to Anderson. After collaborating with CompliancePoint regarding this issue, the company decided to implement Veeam Software (which labels itself as “Availability for the Always-On Enterprise) as a complement to the VMware they were already using.

This change, combined with the 3PAR storage upgrade, resulted in backup times dropping to an average of one to two hours. This made a huge difference in efforts such as file recovery, which in the past had taken as long as three days, and now took less than an hour.

“In speaking with HPE and Veeam, and the two of us, we really determined there was some ‘special sauce’ that Veeam brought to the table with that combination of hardware in place,” said Boone.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE