CITY Furniture’s strategic shift to hybrid cloud helps ensure business continuity in weather-vulnerable Florida
CITY Furniture is a multimillion dollar retailer with showrooms in over 39 locations across Florida. The family-owned business is renowned for their commitment to quality, customer satisfaction, operational resilience and community involvement.
Operating in one of the most weather-volatile regions in the US, the company an unique faced a challenge. They needed to protect their data center and mission-critical enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems from extreme weather conditions such as lightning strikes, torrential downpours, tornado activity and hurricane winds. Any system disruption could halt operations, impact revenue and affect customer satisfaction.
CITY Furniture needed a more resilient, strategically designed IT infrastructure to protect their business continuity and support future growth.
in IT operational costs
in IT overhead for hurricane preparation and readiness
to flex up or down during peak time periods
To strengthen their resilience against Florida’s unpredictable weather, CITY Furniture partnered with IBM to migrate their on-prem systems to IBM® i on IBM Power® Virtual Server on the IBM Cloud® platform. IBM’s proven performance, trusted support and robust infrastructure made them the ideal partner for this strategic move, which marked a turning point in CITY Furniture’s IT evolution.
With IBM Power Virtual Server, CITY Furniture can now run multiple workloads securely and efficiently while using hybrid cloud integration to connect with their front-end systems on Amazon Web Services and other cloud platforms. IBM Power Virtual Server, with the latest Power11 processor, offers enhanced performance and security for critical applications, including point of sale (POS), supply chain management and warehouse management. In addition, the built-in flexibility and agility of the cloud platform, cross-region storage replication and IBM PowerHA® SystemMirror geographic mirroring help ensure business continuity.
A standout feature of the transformation is CITY Furniture’s planned quarterly failover between IBM Cloud data centers in Dallas and Washington, D.C., which helps ensure uninterrupted service and showcases a proactive approach to disaster recovery (DR). The failover capabilities provide CITY Furniture with the ability to flex up or down to meet their business needs during peak time periods. Additionally, the flexible Operational Excellence (OpEx) model and built-in security features further align with CITY Furniture’s strategic goals, while advanced capabilities such as AI-readiness and large memory capacity position the company for future innovation.
In this scalable, cloud-native infrastructure designed for continuity and growth, CITY Furniture’s technology suite can not only withstand extreme conditions but also quickly adapt to the needs of the business today, and in the future.
CITY Furniture’s transformation of their IT infrastructure has delivered measurable results across operations, business resilience and consumer satisfaction.
The company reduced their IT operational costs by 35% with the cost-effective OpEx model and IT overhead for hurricane preparation and readiness by 80%. In addition, the quarterly failover has validated their ability to maintain uninterrupted service, even during severe weather events. The day-to-day work environment has also evolved significantly. Real-time sales tracking now empowers over 780 associates with immediate insights, which has helped enhance decision-making and boost operational efficiency. Seamless integration with Amazon Web Services and customer POS applications, engineered in collaboration with IBM and Apple, supports CITY Furniture’s hybrid cloud model and sales operating applications. This integration has enabled a more agile and responsive IT ecosystem that adapts to business needs and environmental challenges, resulting in 100% ability to flex up or down during peak time periods.
Customer experience has also improved. Now, the company can maintain operations during extreme weather conditions, protecting revenue and customer trust. Beyond internal gains, CITY Furniture’s strategic shift sets a precedent for businesses operating in weather-volatile regions. Their success highlights the importance of proactive risk management and resilient IT design.
As Chad Simpson, Chief Information Officer at CITY Furniture, explains, “We’ve honed our process so we can perform role swaps every quarter. This capability gives us great confidence in our business continuity posture. It’s a powerful thing—and it’s all thanks to IBM Cloud and IBM Power Virtual Server.” He adds, “We’re no longer reacting to weather—we’re prepared for it. Our infrastructure is built to keep the business running, no matter what.”
CITY Furniture is now poised to use their scalable, AI-ready infrastructure to support expansion beyond Florida and explore the use of co-residency with IBM Power Virtual Server. With IBM as a trusted collaborator, the company is well-positioned for continued growth and innovation.
CITY Furniture (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a family-owned retailer and manufacturer serving South Florida and beyond. With showrooms stretching from Miami to Tampa, the company has established a strong regional presence and ranks among America’s top 20 furniture retailers. Committed to delivering quality products and exceptional customer satisfaction, the company’s operational resilience is a key differentiator, enabling them to weather the volatile climate of their home state.
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