Datto Provides Solid Defence Against Downtime for UK Mandarin Stone

Mandarin Stone, an importer and stockist of natural stone, porcelain and ceramic tiles in the UK, improves efficiency and eliminates any unnecessary downtime from its business.

It was recommended a business DR (BDR) service from Datto, Inc., and one melted server later had saved £200k in lost business.

Mandarin Stone has more than two hundred different lines, with a product range offering design concepts for both residential and commercial projects. The company’s warehouse, based in Monmouthshire, South East Wales, is the hub of its business, while a further 10 regional showrooms feed orders into the central fulfillment system. Mandarin Stone has an annual turnover of over £20 million, and stores more than 3TB of data, but despite the well evolved business, the company’s backup was stuck in the Stone Age.

When MSP Module IT Ltd stepped in as the external IT support, it conducted a company-wide audit and immediately raised concerns about Mandarin Stone’s BDR strategy. Module IT recommended Datto as the solution to fulfill Mandarin Stone’s needs.

Alana Preece, FD, Mandarin Stone said: “It was reassuring to hear a brand name, and to see how the solution had worked for other companies.“

Around a year after Datto was first deployed, the solution really came into its own. When the staff came in one morning, they found that the server was down. A faulty air-conditioning unit – blasting hot air rather than cold – had resulted in a melted server, and nothing could be done to restart it. The staff called Module IT, who got to work, virtualising Mandarin Stone’s entire server in the cloud, which meant that Mandarin Stone were back to ‘Business as Usual’ in just a couple of hours. This was a stark contrast from the agonising days of downtime the company had suffered when a server failed before Datto was employed. It also saved Mandarin Stone around £200,000 in lost revenue – that’s a 95% reduction. The entire business actually worked off Datto’s virtualised server ‘without any noticeable difference’ for ten days while Module IT tweaked and tuned the replacement server.

“Datto was invaluable,” said Preece, “and the device paid for itself in that one incident. Module IT handled it all, and it was so easy, we couldn’t even tell it had happened. The investment was well worth it.“

So what would Preece say to other businesses considering Datto? “Definitely do it. We know we can trust the solution so wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to other businesses.“