PetroChoice

PetroChoice Lubrication Solutions optimizes customer experience by implementing an end-to-end hybrid IT infrastructure

Highlights

• Secure, redundant colocation services promote high-availability environment
• Recovery Cloud minimizes data loss and protects business in a disaster recovery scenario or cybersecurity event
• Professional Services experts solve complex challenges and serve as a trusted IT consulting partner

PetroChoice

Maximizing the life of machinery and engines. Saving time and money. Delivering operational efficiency and reliability. Businesses and consumers understand the importance of adding good-quality lubricants in equipment to reduce friction, heat and wear when added between surfaces such as gears and bearings that move against each other. For more than 50 years, PetroChoice has been delivering comprehensive lubrication solutions for industrial, commercial and passenger automobile customers.

As one of the largest petroleum-based lubricant distributors and suppliers in the United States, PetroChoice helps industries overcome their biggest challenge – making sure that as their equipment changes or gets updated, that they are still using the best lubricant for each specific application. The company has grown from its beginning in 1969 as a heating oil company with one location to serving more than 20 industries from 63 locations.

PetroChoice is committed to delivering an end-to-end, seamless experience to its customers. To achieve this optimal service delivery, the company began searching for a hybrid IT partner who could meet its changing business infrastructure needs.

The Challenge

As a company with a nationwide footprint, PetroChoice was looking for a reliable and redundant provider to house its IT infrastructure as well as deliver disaster recovery and professional services. The company also wanted to upgrade its customers’ digital experience and set about to modernize its processes while decreasing and stabilizing expenses.

“That’s it in a nutshell. We wanted to make sure we had a partner we can trust and leverage the resources they have to offer,” said Jeff Linso, VP of information technology and security for PetroChoice. “Flexential offered our team peace of mind that our critical business environment would be available 24/7.”

The PetroChoice Solution

To achieve the resilience its business requires, PetroChoice selected Flexential to provide a hybrid solution that integrates colocation, disaster recovery and professional services. Utilizing a multi-phased approach, the solution began by replicating data from PetroChoice’s existing colocation provider to the Flexential Philadelphia - Collegeville data center. Featuring 2(N+1) fault-tolerant UPS and N+1 cooling, the 200,000 square-foot Flexential facility provides the redundancy necessary to support PetroChoice’s IT operations. This reliability is further backed by Flexential’s 100% SLA on power, network and bandwidth.

The data center also offers enhanced security features—including 5-zone security access, round-the-clock security and technical staff, and biometric scanners—to safeguard PetroChoice’s systems and operations.

Ultimately, PetroChoice plans to shut down its original colocation site and replicate its data from Flexential’s facility in Philadelphia - Collegeville to the Flexential Atlanta - Alpharetta data center utilizing the Flexential Recovery Cloud. This disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) solution promotes the rapid recovery of data, applications and systems to protect the organization’s data and minimize risk from attacks or natural disasters. The cost-effective model allows PetroChoice to achieve the recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) that support its unique business requirements, and also frees PetroChoice’s internal IT team to focus on other strategic IT initiatives. “Flexential is the only company that offered PetroChoice an end-to-end solution and truly checked all the boxes for our redundancy, security and high availability,” said Linso.

End-to-end redundancy was the number one priority for PetroChoice. The company also wanted diversity and disaster recovery capabilities in its IT solution across the United States to support its distributed footprint.

To further ensure the success of the solution, PetroChoice has engaged Flexential Professional Services to assist in the migration of its existing data and to help with disaster recovery mitigation, remediation and testing as well as business continuity planning.

These services ensure PetroChoice’s environment meets its existing needs while offering the ability to flex with future demands in an efficient and cost-effective way.

“Through our partnership with Flexential, PetroChoice can focus on our core business of lubrication solutions rather than having to worry about power redundancy or the security of our data center or the air conditioning system. We do what we do best, and Flexential does what they do best,” said Linso.

The Results – Money Saved Shifted to Digital Experience Upgrade

By going with Flexential, PetroChoice saved about $350,000 per year in IT expenses, which produced about an 8% budget savings for the company. These cost savings have been reallocated toward upgrading, modernizing and digitizing PetroChoice’s customer experience. In an industry that has largely been manually driven and slower to adopt some of the technical aspects of customer service, PetroChoice has transitioned many of its business processes to be more streamlined and real-time to deliver its product and services.

“We are looking to provide our customers with an end-to-end, digitized experience that will give them electronic views of their tank data, their deliveries, their order processes and their order history. We will help our customers use that data to equip them with information, so they understand what their position is and what products and services they need.”