Case Study: John Nicholls Group achieves faster customer transactions and reduced costs with DataCore Software

Faster Customer Transactions leads SMB, John Nicholls Group, to Steadily Grow DataCore 7 Year Install

John Nicholls Group, a UK building and plumbing merchant supporting 230 employees across nine branches and four showrooms, was constrained by an aging IT infrastructure after early server virtualisation. Needing faster, more reliable storage to speed counter and phone transactions and avoid high capital expenditure, John Nicholls selected DataCore’s Software‑Defined Storage (SDS) solution for its iSCSI connectivity and hardware‑agnostic pooling and mirroring.

DataCore deployed an SDS layer that pooled, mirrored and cached disk blocks across existing DAS, dramatically boosting SQL/transaction performance and enabling centralised management and rapid provisioning of roughly 20 virtual machines. Over a seven‑year install DataCore delivered measurable benefits: “night and day” transaction speed improvements, live maintenance and automatic failover that masked an ESX server failure, extended hardware life (reducing CapEx), and faster customer service with improved business continuity through snapshots and CDP.

Nicholls

Cal Letts

IT Support Manager