Mall of America, located in Bloomington, Minnesota, is the largest mall in the United States. Since opening its doors in 1992, MOA has earned a reputation as a world-class shopping, dining, and entertainment destination. It welcomes an average of 40 million people from around the world and generates nearly $2 billion in economic impact annually.
“Mall of America’s number one priority is ensuring that our guests have an amazing experience on our property,” said Janette Smrcka, IT Director at Mall of America. “IT plays a key role in creating the special moments that earn our customer’s loyalty. Our team is constantly reevaluating our processes for opportunities to increase efficiencies and innovate. We’ve never been a company that sits still; having partners like Rubrik that think outside the box helps us move even faster.”
Prior to adopting Rubrik, Mall of America struggled with a time-consuming legacy data management solution. With Rubrik’s simple, automated data management, MOA is spending 80% less time managing data backups, which translates to 52 days of added productivity per year. MOA can now focus on optimizing IT processes to deliver more value to the business, from proactively preventing against data loss by implementing encrypted email capabilities to enabling employees to remotely access their applications.
In addition to over 520 stores, Mall of America is home to Nickelodeon Universe, a 7-acre indoor theme park. Every morning, MOA’s maintenance and operational staff conduct a safety check of the park’s rides, a process that was completed on paper over the past two decades. The MOA IT team’s increase in productivity with Rubrik has provided them time to develop and launch a new internal application that performs that check electronically. Now, the team can easily report on that data and staff can get back on the floor with guests faster.
“Gaining and retaining consumer attention in today’s incredibly competitive retail market is more difficult than ever,” said Arvind Nirthrakashyap, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Rubrik. “Rubrik allows MOA to spend more time on driving innovation and less on IT maintenance. With our cloud data management platform, companies have peace of mind that their data is protected and can focus on delivering memorable customer experiences.”
Mall of America protects its 100% virtualized environment and mission-critical applications with Rubrik. Additional benefits include:
- Seamless cloud archival and cost savings with Microsoft Azure: Rubrik’s native integration with Azure ensures maximum storage efficiency to scale MOA’s cloud footprint. This has allowed the company to migrate off tape, eliminating unnecessary overhead and leading to immediate hard savings.
- Rapid restores for streamlined upgrades: Mall of America’s previous backup solution hindered their “always on” mindset with slow restores and clunky system upgrades. Thanks to Rubrik’s unmatched speed and simplicity, MOA’s largest servers can be restored in just 30 minutes, giving IT admins back seven hours of their day.
- Hyper-V integration: Rubrik easily navigated MOA’s existing Hyper-V infrastructure with its policy-driven intelligence.
- Ease of use: Rubrik’s consumer-like interface allows the team to easily find and access data with confidence.
