The challenge
Protectall has become one of the largest protection plan providers in the US, partnering with many top retailers, to provide protection plans to their customers. With more than 2,500 retail locations and over 10 million active contracts, the company offers a full array of protection plan services and products to companies in the furniture, appliances, consumer electronics, mattress and bedding, hospitality and pest control industries.
The company delivers support to customers through a network of service providers across the United States.
With so many customers to support, efficient service a necessity and a growing backlog of requests to the technology team, Chief Technology Officer Lawrence Mandras and his team had to look at how to improve the delivery of IT back to the business. As a company that had previously relied on support from proprietary software companies, Mandras and his team decided to research alternative approaches that could reduce spending and improve performance.
The solution
To begin, Mandras looked at the company’s existing relationships with vendors. For its critical applications, it had relied on MySQL Enterprise as the database deployed, but it was clear this implementation was expensive compared to the value that was being delivered. While MySQL is an open source database, the edition that was in place had a substantial cost attached to it.
Mandras turned to Percona for consulting advice around the approach that the company could take in future. This included looking at both short-term cost reduction steps that the team could take, and more long-term options to support the company’s operations and customer growth.
Working together, Mandras and the Percona consultants established a way to resolve the company’s cost predicament around MySQL that would deliver cost savings for the team. This would then support more long term planning for the future of the company’s database infrastructure.
Working with Percona
To start with, Mandras and Percona consulting team moved the Protectall database from Oracle’s MySQL Enterprise over to Percona Server for MySQL, a fully open source product that includes enterprise functionality and tools for management, backup and observability. Percona Server for MySQL provides a significantly more cost-effective solution to Protectall’s database requirements while delivering all of the management and data protection features that the team required.
To manage this migration, Mandras worked with Percona’s Managed Services team to plan and execute the move over. As a drop-in replacement for MySQL, Percona Server for MySQL delivered the same database experience and levels of reliability for much less cost. The Percona Managed Services team supported Protectall throughout the installation and cut-over process, ensuring that the result was a successful project.
Following this, the Protectall team were able to look at how they would plan out their long-term strategy and where they would go in future. After evaluating commercial proprietary products that could replace their original internally developed applications, the Protectall team decided to continue with their own solutions. However the team did decide that a new database platform would be needed to support that expected future growth, and so engaged with Percona on a further migration to PostgreSQL.
The Percona Managed Services and consulting team provided advice and support for that long-term migration from MySQL to PostgreSQL. Percona’s experience across multiple databases ensured that Protectall got the best possible results for their needs.
"We relied on MySQL to support our critical application, but we were at an impasse around the cost to run that application in future. Working with Percona’s consulting and Managed Services team, we got impartial and effective advice that helped us set our course for the future. The Percona team supported our move from MySQL Enterprise to Percona Server, saving us a huge amount. Then we could work with Percona again on our longterm strategy and how we could take advantage of PostgreSQL. Their skill, expertise and willingness to work with us is essential to our approach, which has to support millions of customers and thousands of partners."
Lawrence Mandras
Chief Technology Officer at Protectall
Protectall faced a challenge around their database strategy and how this would support the business over time. Working with Percona, Protectall completed a migration from MySQL Enterprise to Percona Server for MySQL. This was followed by collaboration on a further PostgreSQL migration.
The project delivered the following results:
✓ Move to Percona Server for MySQL reduced software licensing costs
✓ Migration included enterprise-class data backup, availability and observability
✓ Future migration plans to support long-term growth
About Protectall
Protectall is a leading provider of protection plans covering furniture, appliances, consumer electronics, mattress and bedding, hospitality and pest control. The company has more than 2,500 retail locations, serving more than 10 million active contracts to customers across the US.
Contact Us
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