Safety Products, Inc. delivers occupational safety solutions to the industrial, construction, and government sectors.
Safety Products replaced aging VMware infrastructure with SC//HyperCore™ virtualization suite enabling a fully remote IT team to manage a resilient, right-sized environment with ease.
How Safety Products is Simplifying IT with Solutions from Scale Computing
Safety Products, a growing safety products distributor serving the southeastern United States, faced a critical IT transition after losing its long-standing VMware® support, an issue compounded by a key administrator’s accelerated retirement timeline. With a lean IT team and fully remote administrator, the company needed more reliable infrastructure that could be managed without deep specialization.
IT Challenges
- Current virtualization license was expiring and not being renewed
- Looking for a highly available and easily scalable solution
- Limited IT support staff made remote and simple manageability critical
- Change in IT network leadership required a quick and easy migration
Scale Computing Solution
- Deployed SC//HyperCore
- Easy to manage, reliable infrastructure for distributed edge environments with no on-site IT
- Seamless deployment
- Reduced dependencies on frequent hardware refresh cycles
Customer Results
- Saved time and valuable resources by integrating software, servers, and storage in one, fully integrated platform
- Reduced complexity and operational overhead
- Repositioned company for stronger, more sustainable growth trajectory
The Challenge: Simplifying Infrastructure and Complexity for a Small, Distributed IT Team
From its headquarters in central Florida, Safety Products, Inc., has been providing personal protective and work-zone safety equipment to the industrial, construction and government markets across the southeast for nearly 60 years. Now, in its sixth decade, the company is continuing to expand across the country. That growth however, met a roadblock when the company was informed it wouldn't be relicensed by VMware®, a situation that couldn't have come at a worse time as it coincided with their network administrator's imminent retirement.
"We had been a 20-year VMware® customer, but we're not dealing with thousands and thousands of machines, and we don't have a big IT department. We weren't their target market anymore," explained Dennis Hershey, Safety Products' Chief Technology Officer, who noted that the company's workforce is largely remote.
Being able to administer the servers and the environment from a remote location was key for the company. Not only were they consolidating two locations that were thousands of miles apart, they were also looking to condense from a massive unit to something more manageable that gave the CIO direct access and featured immediate fail over. They also realized that they needed a solution that would free them from the endless cycle of needing new hardware on an annual basis.
"We were looking for some kind of hypervisor solution and searched other avenues and options for different VMware® virtual machine infrastructure and were really close to going with a Windows Hyper-V solution," Hershey recounted. But, after advice from their partner, Data Integrity Services, they decided to investigate what Scale Computing had to offer.
"Data Integrity knew what we were looking for and suggested Scale Computing," explained Hershey. "Even though it was a bit different from what we had been considering, they thought Scale Computing would be a good fit for us. It was perfect timing because we were already looking to engage more with Data Integrity's services beyond what we had been doing, and it turned out to be the ideal solution."
"Scale Computing stands out as a disruptor in the market because they focus on the solution, not just the sale. Many vendors weren't interested in working with us given the size of our environment—we do a lot with a little. From the start, it was an honest conversation, and throughout onboarding and training, it was clear we were working with a team that had our best interests in mind, not just closing a deal. We never felt like a number. That made a real difference for us."— Dennis Hershey, Chief Technology Officer, Safety Products, Inc.
The Solution: Simple, Right-sized HCI with SC//HyperCore Virtualization Suite
Hershey explained that they were pleasantly surprised by what they learned from their discussions with Scale Computing, noting that the company pointed them to SC//HyperCore virtualization suite, an easier, more cost-effective solution than what they had initially thought they needed. "There was full transparency, an honest conversation from the beginning, and that was very helpful for us," he said, explaining how the company helped them right-size their solution.
By September 2025, Safety Products had fully deployed SC//HyperCore virtualization suite. Despite some unexpected challenges on their end, Hershey found that overall, the migration and deployment process was "dirt simple. It all worked great." Of note, he said, was the fact that they were never without assistance. "Everyone stayed fully engaged throughout the entire process. They focused on the solution, not just the sale."
Offering a fully integrated, self-healing platform, SC//HyperCore virtualization suite's all-in-one infrastructure combines compute, storage and virtualization. Its intuitive interface reduces day-to-day operational complexity, making it easy to manage in enterprises where IT resources are scarce. Built-in high availability and self-healing capabilities help ensure consistent performance and uptime, minimizing disruption to critical workloads. The result is a cost-effective, resilient solution that simplifies IT operations while supporting long-term scalability and growth.
Thanks to the availability, ease of maintenance, and simplified support, we're better positioned to partner with our MSP, Data Integrity Services, going forward. It's put us on a stronger success path than we were on before. We never wanted to become deep experts at what it takes to manage a hypervisor environment. Scale Computing has made it possible for us to manage our environment quite successfully in-house. Scale Computing gives you the tools you need to get the job done without unnecessary complexity."— Dennis Hershey, Chief Technology Officer, Safety Products, Inc.
The Benefits: Simplicity, Performance, and Control
The ability to maintain full control of the environment with minimal overhead proved especially valuable given Safety Product's lean and fully remote team. The company realized almost immediate improvements in the performance and availability after deploying SC//HyperCore, with systems running more effectively and reliably.
Built-in availability gave the team confidence in their environment, allowing them to test and validate failover capabilities and ensure business continuity without disruption. Moreover, day-to-day management became simpler as SC//HyperCore virtualization suite's single-pane-of-glass interface and intuitive tools meant the IT team could manage its infrastructure without the need for deep hypervisor expertise.
"Performance availability was key for us, and it's there. Performance-wise, everything is functioning so much better and managing through a single plane of glass is so much better than what we had before," said Hershey. "Plus, it's a money-saver as we didn't need to purchase additional hardware."
Looking ahead, Hershey believes that SC//HyperCore virtualization suite will better position Security Products as a partner with both Data Integrity Services and Scale Computing, and for long-term growth. "Because of that availability, that ability, ease of maintenance, ease of support for our own environment, it will allow us to partner better and we're positioned for a better success path."