Shifting Focus from Infrastructure to Efficiency, Innovation and AI

"Our team’s focus is now on the business outcomes that we want and the ability to bring a better experience to our employees and our customers when they come shop.
That's our job."

~ Eric Pawlowski, Director of IT and Infrastructure

Business Challenge

Facing organic growth, The Tile Shop team sought a modernized enterprise platform that would support the adoption of scalable and agile practices across the business. The Tile Shop had an aging on-premises data center that was increasing in cost to maintain and upgrade, and unable to easily scale and flex to support growth and innovation. “We had some hyper converged infrastructure with our network and storage and compute,” said Eric Pawlowski, Director of IT and Infrastructure at The Tile Shop. “Facing the end of life of the hardware and a refresh of the data center facility, I knew right then and there it was time to evaluate cloud.”

The evaluation was focused on resolving the following challenges:

Aging Data Center: The on-premise data center included hardware due for refresh by the end of 2023. The physical facility also required significant upgrades.

High Costs: Refreshing hardware and modernizing the data center infrastructure would incur substantial costs. Additionally, maintaining dual data centers for disaster recovery was becoming increasingly expensive.

Operational Inefficiencies: Existing infrastructure lacked the flexibility and speed needed to support rapid business growth and technological advancements.

Security and Governance: Ensuring robust security measures and governance for the growing data and IT infrastructure, as well as modern work environments, was paramount.

Pawlowski had early discussions with Microsoft around moving to Azure and the selection of a knowledgeable and trusted partner in the SAP and cloud ecosystem, selecting Protera to migrate and modernize their workloads.

The Protera Solution

Protera provided a tailored solution that involved architecting, migrating, optimizing and securing mission critical SAP, SAP S/4HANA and surrounding workloads on Microsoft Azure. The planning phase of the migration was thorough- covering the technical aspects of the project but also focused on holistically integrating governance around cost, security, and end user access. Protera leveraged Microsoft native tooling such as Azure Monitor, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery and Azure Security Center as part of the process.

“The planning phase was extensive!’” said Pawlowski. “Our Protera team said, ‘we want to future proof you, to think about your cost, and plus one environment.’ Protera put governance and thoughtfulness into everything we did from planning to integrating tools down the road.”

Key steps in the modernization solution included:

Assessment and Planning: Protera conducted a thorough assessment of The Tile Shop's existing IT infrastructure and developed a comprehensive migration plan. This included evaluating the costs, governance, security, and technical requirements for the new cloud environment.

Building the Cloud Infrastructure: A landing zone was created in Azure, incorporating necessary networking, access controls, and firewall configurations. The environment was designed to support multiple environments, including production, development, and disaster recovery.

Data and Application Migration: The Tile Shop's Windows servers and databases were systematically copied and migrated to the cloud, utilizing Azure-native tools to Rehost Windows servers on Azure and ensure seamless data transfer and integration.

Disaster Recovery Testing: A full-scale disaster recovery test was conducted, achieving 100% success and validating the robustness of the new cloud environment.

Security and Governance Implementation: Advanced security features and governance protocols were integrated to protect data and manage costs effectively. This included setting up automated backups, security controls, and compliance measures. 

Realized Results

The Tile Shop successfully migrated its SAP and S/4HANA systems to Microsoft Azure, transforming its IT infrastructure in eight weeks. The transition of approximately 80 windows servers to Microsoft Azure enabled The Tile Shop to achieve faster time to value, higher levels of security, better business continuity, and more observability and automation of its SAP system. 

“SAP is our mission critical workload – our solution for point of sale, finances, inventory, transportation, and warehouse. Now live on the cloud, upgrading these solutions- such as point of sale- takes weeks, not months,” shared Pawlowski. “Our team’s focus is now on the business outcomes that we want and the ability to bring a better experience to our employees and our customers when they come shop. That's our job.”

Key results of the migration and modernization include:

Cost Savings: Eliminating costly hardware refreshes and physical data center upgrades, The Tile Shop has realized substantial cost savings as well as more efficient resource management and cost control.

Enhanced Flexibility and Scalability: Flexibility and quickly scaling operations supports the opening of new stores and the implementation of new business initiatives with ease. The ability to spin up new environments rapidly has also reduced project timelines significantly.

Improved Security and Governance: The integration of advanced security features and governance protocols has enhanced data protection and compliance. Automated tools help manage and control the environment, preventing cost overruns and ensuring adherence to business policies.

Operational Efficiency: The cloud migration has streamlined IT operations, freeing up the team's time to focus on strategic initiatives rather than routine maintenance tasks. The use of automation tools has reduced manual workloads and improved overall efficiency.

Future-Ready Infrastructure: A cloud-based infrastructure positions the team to respond quickly to business needs, implement new technologies, and enhance the customer experience.

Looking to the Future

This strategic move delivered substantial cost savings, enhanced flexibility, improved security, and greater operational efficiency. It not only resolved immediate challenges but also positioned The Tile Shop for sustained growth and future success.

Pawlowski and his team are reviewing integrations with cloud-native DevOps tooling, leveraging real-time and automated scaling, and deploying SAP S/4 Retail. Embracing innovation, Pawlowski and staff have leveraged automation to start and stop systems or install patches, as well as real world artificial intelligence (AI). Microsoft CoPilot has been rolled out to the IT team, which offers efficiency recommendations and vulnerability alerts. Running on Microsoft Azure, The Tile Shop also leverages Microsoft Defender to enhance security best practices. 

“We have a lot of big ideas at The Tile Shop, primarily around innovative ways to interact with our customers,” said Pawlowski. “Whether it's mobile capabilities, taking payments in a different way, we can now build an exciting roadmap for the next three, four or five years.”