THE CHALLENGE
Food manufacturer, Valley Food Systems, needed an organization that could implement and support a cloud hosting solution for their custom applications. They needed to eliminate downtime situations that were causing a standstill in mission-critical operations. They struggled to achieve a high-available network and infrastructure that was required for their 24/7/365 operations.
THE SOLUTION
Magna5 cloud hosting, coupled with 24/7/365 monitoring, management and data backup solutions were able to achieve the seamless and protected hosting environment needed. Features include:
- Cloud hosting
- Secure data center
- 24/7 network and server monitoring
- Continuous data backups
- Support by expert engineers
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
Founded over 60 years ago, Valley Food Systems is a food service manufacturer that provides military bases, in-school summer programs and natural disaster relief locations with a wide array of custom and private label, zero-waste meal kits. Valley Food Systems has locations in six states, and serves nationally and world-wide from their headquarters in Youngstown, Ohio.
Valley Food Systems was looking for a managed services partner that could handle their unique IT needs and budget requirements. After a massive network downtime situation that left Valley Food Systems down for days, they decided it was time to find an alternative solution that could ensure this never happened again. Jim Stizza, General Manager for Valley Food Systems, was frustrated by the shortcomings and limitations of various IT service providers. “For a manufacturing company, it is imperative to have operations up and running 24/7/365,” explained Stizza. “We needed a solution and partner that was transparent and had a knowledgeable staff that could support our needs in a timely fashion, not weeks later.”
After dealing with a few service providers not up to the task, leaving them with downtime situations, they partnered with Magna5. Valley Food Systems found the solutions and support they were looking for in Magna5’s customizable Managed Services offerings. Currently, Magna5 acts as Valley Food Systems one-stop-shop IT provider for reliability, consistency and data protection including monitoring, cloud hosting, monitoring and management and data backups.
Magna5 delivers a supported hosting environment for Valley Food Systems’ custom, mission-critical systems and applications that are required in a 24/7/365 manufacturing environment. Their servers are hosted in the cloud at Magna5’s secure data center, which allows Valley Food Systems to meet their availability demands, without limiting their functionality and scalability needs.
Magna5 coupled monitoring, management and backups into their solution to ensure that Valley Food System eliminates network and server downtime, while protecting their critical systems and data from a disaster like ransomware or hardware failure. Magna5’s Operations Center is constantly monitoring Valley Food Systems’ network and servers for small issues. They remediate the issues before they become system-wide problems – eliminating outages.
“Since our engagement with Magna5, they have given Valley Food Systems reliable network and servers that are almost always available.” explained Stizza. “Magna5 also has an Operations Center that is staffed 24/7/365 so our issues are recognized and resolved all hours of the day. If we do run into a network issue, Magna5’s certified engineers have it covered. The data center has redundancies that we could never afford to duplicate. Our servers are maintained to support our needs, and our backups are done nightly with zero issues!”
“From day one Magna5 has advised Valley Food Systems with technology choices that would be budget-friendly and technologically seamless with our current environment. They have even consulted on specific software and applications that we should implement. Our chosen software, aided by Magna5, has allowed us to develop the entire customized manufacturing end of our business, with minimal issues,” commented Stizza.
Magna5 was able to bring Valley Food Systems peace of mind that their multi-location, mission-critical network and servers are protected and operating at optimal efficiency.
THE RESULTS
Magna5’s Managed Services gave Valley Food Systems the reliable, protected and 24/7/365 IT operations needed in their “always-on” manufacturing business. Their network and servers experience a 99.999% availability because of proactive monitoring and management done by Magna5’s 24/7/365 Operations Center.
THE ADVANTAGES
- 24/7/365 operations to support their food manufacturing needs.
- More reliability and availability to complete orders on-time to their various military, school and disaster relief programs.
- Technology advancements and support that organizations their size can rarely afford in-house.
- Decreased downtime and associated costs.
“In the 8 plus years we have worked with Magna5, they have proven to be honest and trustworthy. They have incredible response time when an issue arises. The company truly understands our needs. Companies our size can rarely afford an IT department, let alone 24/7/365 staff. We are able to work hand-in-hand with Magna5 to get maintenance and support at all times of the day. They truly are our eyes and ears.”
– Jim Stizza, General Manager, Valley Food Systems
