Coral Homes, a leading home building company in Australia, has transformed its storage performance by deploying solutions from StorageCraft. It has successfully tackled its data storage and protection challenges.
With a reputation built on trust since 1990, Coral Homes is one of the leading home builders in Australia. Over the past 30 years, Coral Homes has perfected the process of creating a dream home utilizing the highest standards of craft, design and products available on the market.
In 2018, Coral Homes went to the open market searching for a new solution to enable it to modernize its data management and protection strategies and associated infrastructure. It was introduced to StorageCraft by BES Information Technology.
Together, they sought to understand the challenges faced by Coral Homes and assembled a solution and implementation process to suit its needs.
The challenge
As a growing construction company, Coral Homes wanted to be confident in the storage, management and protection of its data, especially when trying to connect with home buyers across the country.
The main challenge it faced regarded the large volume of client data that was stored off-site, on a private cloud. This had potential for risks such as security, cost management, compliance and performance.
Furthermore, it became a challenge when a staff member lost data. Previously, having data offsite, it would take team members longer to retrieve lost data and they would constantly go back and forth, between staff and its previous managed service provider.
The solution
Coral Homes went in search for a scale out storage solution that had the capability to relocate its data to its rightful place and restore confidence in its IT team. BES’s and StorageCraft’s industry experience, customer service reputations, combined with the OneXafe solution was a perfect fit for Coral Homes to tackle its data storage and protection challenges.
OneXafe delivered a highly scalable, available and easily managed network-attached storage (NAS) solution for Coral Homes. With OneXafe’s continuous data protection, Coral Homes’ data is now resilient against ransomware or user errors, ensuring that it is always recoverable.
Furthermore, StorageCraft’s above and beyond attitude convinced Coral Homes that they would get the best support now and in the future.
Coral Homes underwent a simple and straightforward setup process with StorageCraft’s OneXafe 4412 solution. Since undergoing the implementation process in August 2019, Coral Homes has been able to claim its data back.
Coral Homes has experienced the benefits of dealing with a single vendor that has end-to-end data protection and recovery solution set and support services. To enable Coral Homes to achieve its Disaster Recovery goals, it has deployed a suite of StorageCraft solutions including ShadowProtect SPX, Image Manager, Cloud Services Premium and OneXafe.
The results
Coral Homes has experienced a number of significant benefits since engaging with StorageCraft. The OneXafe solution offered it a seamless data platform which unified data with scale-out storage in an easy-to-use format.
This was vital for a company like Coral Homes as it has a great deal of company data moving in and out of servers and through its staff each day. The quick access to multiple versions of data at all hours of the day has been a crucial element to ensure its customers receive the best service.
Coral Homes has witnessed so many positives since implementing OneXafe, one of the biggest being the peace of mind they feel knowing their data is on-site and backed up. Additionally, Coral Homes has another OneXafe 4412 offsite replicating data that can be accessed at any time.
Currently, Coral Homes uses 23 terabytes of data storage which can easily be increased in the future as required with the OneXafe solution. It is keen to bring more client data back to its office and store to the OneXafe solution so it can maximize its investment.
Matt Kolkka, Senior IT Officer Coral Homes, said: “A personal highlight for me would be the StorageCraft customer service experience, as it was one of the most standout services we have ever experienced. When we had any questions or queries, they made it easy for us to reach out and their support was exceptional from the start.
“The setup process was really easy. The MSP and StorageCraft assisted with the setup in a timely manner. The process really does complement their one-size-fits-all solution. We had support, resources and personnel at our disposal to help us with any challenges that we faced.”
Kolkka compared the legacy system the company had previously used with the solution from StorageCraft.
“Previously having the data offsite, it felt as if our data was held at ransom, the change of having access in our office ensured we could do what we needed, adding value to our company,” he said. “The OneXafe solution seemed to be one size fits all. It covered our security concerns, cost management and we know our data is safe and on-site with us.
“We chose StorageCraft not only for the products that we purchased but for the range of products that we could integrate into our system. It was clear from the start that the platform was a great fit for us due to the list of features and ease of use.
“The StorageCraft solutions that we implemented are core to our business strategy. Together the OneXafe and the StorageCraft cloud are essential to our Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery processes.
“The biggest positive is the peace of mind that our data is on-site and safe. Previously, it was up to 24 hours before our stored data got sent back to us. With the StorageCraft solution it’s instant which increases our productivity. It’s one less thing to worry about. At Coral Homes we can’t afford any downtime. The implementation of OneXafe has brought power back to our team.”
In the future, Coral Homes has the capability to move to a hybrid cloud strategy, which will assist it in growth and development. “The partnership between Coral Homes and StorageCraft is exciting,” said Kolkka. “We are in the planning phase of moving to a hybrid cloud strategy. With the help of StorageCraft we are confident in our plans moving forward.”
