Merrimac Solutions Supports Low-flow, High-growth Plumbing Products Manufacturer
Michael Schuster is a fourth-generation plumber who came up with better designs for some of the parts he was repairing and replacing. He patented the designs and founded MJSI, which designs toilet fill valves and other products that use up to 70 percent less water. For MJSI, what’s good for the environment is good for business, as the company’s water-saving products have experienced explosive growth. MJSI products have been featured on the Today show, have won large apartment complexes and hotel operators as customers, and are now carried by Lowe’s, Home Depot and other major retailers.
MJSI has maintained a small staff throughout this growth. The company always outsourced its IT systems management, and no in-house personnel have the time or expertise to support all its systems and users. More than half MJSI’s employees regularly access systems remotely from their laptops. As MJSI’s business became increasingly large and mobile, it became clear the company’s IT systems and service provider couldn’t perform as needed.
“We have people working seven days a week, and people are accessing our systems nearly 24 hours a day. For us, the most important thing a service provider can do is resolve any problems quickly,” said Rich Katzmann, MJSI’s chief operating officer. “No one in the company has any real IT expertise, and some of us know just enough to be dangerous, so we really rely on our service provider. We needed more responsiveness that what we were getting.”
Katzmann began evaluating other service providers, who proposed a wide range of systems. Merrimac Solutions, Inc. impressed Katzmann with its grasp of MJSI’s needs, and its flexible approaches for satisfying them.
“We knew we needed to upgrade our server,” Katzmann said. “Merrimac stood out because they provided multiple technology and budget paths we could follow. They made recommendations for how we could get through the year, and showed us a migration path so we could upgrade systems in the future as we continue to grow. Other companies proposed bigger systems or wanted to migrate us from of the Microsoft environment, which was outside our comfort level.”
MJSI chose Merrimac Solutions to install new server and backup systems and provide ongoing IT support. MJSI’s requirements included Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint running on new Dell server hardware. The enhancements made to Exchange and SharePoint provided more system security, and improved access for the remote and mobile workers compared to the legacy Microsoft operating system MJSI had been using, while satisfying the company’s preference for maintaining the Microsoft environment.
To increase MJSI’s resource capacity without driving up the equipment it needed to purchase and support, Merrimac Solutions virtualized a server using VMware’s ESXi hypervisor, and implemented remote backup so MJSI’s systems are backed up to Merrimac Solutions’ own data center. Remote backup removes MJSI’s storage space limitations and provides disaster recovery capability because now backups are maintained at an offsite location.
The addition of virtualization software gave MJSI the flexibility to test new applications and systems without adding computer hardware. Merrimac also used virtualization to improve MJSI’s system availability.
MJSI had only a single server before the upgrade, so taking it down for the transition was potentially disruptive to the business. However, Merrimac Solutions managed the upgrade without inconveniencing MJSI’s users.
“I really appreciated that the Merrimac Solutions team was willing to start on a Friday night and work through the weekend to minimize impact on our business,” Katzmann said. “They made the changeover transparent to us.”