5 VPDC in action 7 Customer spotlight 9 About Savvis
The IT foundation that
redefines eCommerce
White paper:
eCommerce Solutions
table of Contents
2 Introduction 3 When buying gets inthe way of selling 4 Virtual Private Data
Centre — an agile and robust foundation for eCommerce
In today’s omni-channel marketplace, eCommerce
is accounting for a growing proportion of total
retail. According to Forrester
1, Western Europe
saw online sales surpass €112 billion in 2012, set to
reach €191 billion in 2017. While many countries are
still witnessing double-digit growth, more mature
markets are entering a new era of competition,
prompting businesses to pursue more aggressive
online strategies to secure and defend share of
wallet and identify new sources of differentiation.
Internet retailing demands a web storefront that
is optimised for desktop and mobile browsing,
highly available, with a rapidly scalable technical
infrastructure to host it. And, of course, the
inventory management systems, ordering and
shipping processes need to be integrated for
everything to work seamlessly
in real-time when a sale is made.
2
2013 2017
proportion of the country’s economy represented by online retail
1Italy Spain Sweden France Netherlands Germany UK
2% 3% 2% 4% 4% 5% 5% 7% 7% 10% 5% 7% 13% 15%
When buying gets in the way of selling
The need for speed
Consumers are an unforgiving lot. Internet giants such as Google have redefined expectations of the user experience across all forms of online interaction. If they don’t already, your customers will come to take consistency across the desktop, mobile, store and contact centre for granted. Web visitors care more about speed than the bells and whistles of a stunning front-end, clever functionality or more content — to the extent that a 1-second delay in page response can lead to a 7% drop in conversions3.
As well as being a major contributor to page abandonment, page loading time is also becoming a factor in search engine rankings. The good news is that even the smallest independent retailer can compete with big stores by delivering a speedy, reliable online experience. Anticipating the unexpected
For any retailer, the biggest challenge includes having the inventory, operational capacity and logistical flexibility to meet unpredictable demand. Online sellers have an added pressure: the website also needs to be capable of handling unforeseen spikes in traffic or rapid growth without any adverse impact on performance. Stability of the infrastructure and web applications is vital: with not just revenues but brand loyalty at stake, an outage during peak season could cause heads to roll. But it typically takes enterprises weeks or months to get servers up and running. That means many organisations are buying hardware for specific points in the calendar which stands idle for the rest of the year. This is hard to justify in retail, where capital is scarce and margins are often wafer-thin. Freedom to experiment
It’s not just about coping with the unforeseen. eCommerce portals offer greater digital agility than bricks and mortar when it comes to developing or refining offerings. But how do you accurately size the infrastructure required to test an innovative idea, launch a new product or to support consumer response to a high-profile advertising campaign, event or news story? Guess too high and sit on wasted capital. Guess too low and you risk providing a poor online experience. Wait until the last minute and you end up paying over the odds for hardware. What’s more, when organisations launch eBusiness efforts in new markets, they typically expect to see a return within 12 months for B2C brands (46%) and 1-2 years for B2B (53%)4. The longer the buying cycle for infrastructure, and the
higher the capital investment, the harder it is to meet these payback periods.
2 Microsoft research presented at Tech-Ed in May 2011 3 www.kissmetrics.com
4 Source: Forrester Research Inc. Global eBusiness and Channel
Strategy Professional Online Survey, May 2012 3
2 Price comparison service, Shopzilla, has
shown that reducing page load times from approximately 7 seconds to around 2 seconds leads to an increase in revenue between 7 and 12%, while Google has stated that a 400 millisecond delay in response — less than the time it takes to blink — reduces searches per user by more than half a percentage point.
Virtual private Data Centre — an agile and robust
foundation for eCommerce
For in-house environments, infrastructure is invariably the longest lead-time item of any eCommerce initiative. Businesses are therefore increasingly looking to third party cloud hosting for their eCommerce platforms to
do more and buy less. However, mass-market public cloud offerings tend to be built with the needs of start-ups and sole trader businesses in mind — not the stringent demands of corporate IT. Online transactions bring a whole host of security challenges in terms of data protection and jurisdiction, governance, and compliance with payment card security standards such as PCI DSS.
What’s needed is a business-class solution with the commercial flexibility of a public cloud, for the best of both worlds, such as a Virtual Private Data Centre (VPDC) created within a secure, multi-tenant cloud. This offers the benefit of standards-based infrastructure, high-performance and persistent storage, multi-tiered security, enterprise-grade servers, switches, firewalls, virtualisation, load balancing and back-up and recovery capabilities — all billed hourly with no long-term commitments.
Provisioning is straightforward, transparent and autonomous, thanks to an online portal that allows servers to be added as needed according to predefined service levels, with advanced user design and enhanced security practices that were previously the preserve of dedicated IT environments.
Fast and fully flexible
A VPDC eliminates reliance on error-prone estimates of seasonal demand met by on-premise infrastructure. It offers the elasticity to provision just for today’s requirements and scale up seamlessly tomorrow — and if capacity is no longer needed once the rush subsides, it can be simply handed back the day after with nothing further to pay.
For businesses looking to try something new and experimental, thousands of instances can be spun up in minutes and then switched off if it doesn’t work out, so the project isn’t weighed down by sunk costs. Retailers with a mix of online and bricks-and-mortar can support distributed environments more effectively by giving stores the flexibility to run complementary online initiatives, open a pop-up store or retail at a conference.
For those reluctant to put sensitive data or applications into a multi-tenant environment, a hybrid capability can address concerns over security. Such workloads can be deployed locally or managed on dedicated hardware whilst the VPDC is used purely for handling peak traffic. And as more and more business tools become available in the cloud, the ability to integrate solutions can also allow online sellers to connect inventory or point of sale to financial software, eCommerce platforms or loyalty programmes.
4 VPDC: A secure, business-class solution with the commercial flexibility of a public cloud
VpDC makes eCommerce easier
Lightening the load of the CIO
For CIOs, a VPDC brings unprecedented flexibility to eCommerce. Even under strenuous loads, the user experience can remain consistent. New initiatives can be deployed faster, without the lengthy procurement processes or budgetary roadblocks of major
infrastructure investment. Expenditure can be controlled
with a real-time view of usage and, with hourly billing, wasteful under-utilisation becomes a thing of the past. The ability to allocate infrastructure costs to individual projects helps the CIO to demonstrate the strategic worth of IT to business initiatives. Resources that would previously have been deployed on infrastructure management can be saved or redeployed to support innovation. Thanks to a resilient, enterprise-class cloud environment, the company can remain compliant with information security requirements and reduce the chances of reputational damage through data breaches or noisy neighbours.
Removing the barriers to development
Development and test platforms need to be agile enough to deploy updates quickly and regularly, and flexible enough to manage variable development cycles. A VPDC offers a highly available test platform and the ability to template, clone, park and un-park server instances to reduce test and development costs. Abstracted from the demands of infrastructure management, developers can use the self-service portal of the VPDC to autonomously spin up new infrastructure, often in minutes, not weeks — within pre-agreed budgets to maintain project governance and prevent rogue spending. And by being able to switch off capacity when it’s no longer needed, the VPDC reduces the business risk
of innovation.
Empowering the marketing department
Marketing and associated teams will value the immediacy of being able to access capacity in the VPDC at the click of a mouse, enabling a level of responsiveness that on-premise infrastructure can’t permit. Promotions and campaigns can be launched in minutes with confidence that, no matter how enthusiastic the uptake, the compute resources delivering it won’t be overwhelmed. Experimental projects can be scaled up rapidly, or turned off just as quickly. Improved website availability and performance can support richer functionality and create the high quality, engaging experience needed to turn visitors into customers, resulting in higher conversion rates, increased revenues and more repeat business.
5 Resources that would previously
have been deployed on infrastructure management can be saved or redeployed to support innovation
VPDC in action
• A major pop concert is driving a surge in traffic to a ticket vendor’s website. By switching on more capacity in the VPDC, the ticketer is able to accommodate increased traffic without slowing down the performance of its booking engine, unlike its competitor’s which falls over.
• A department store pays to maintain servers specifically bought to handle online transactions in the run-up to Christmas, which stand idle for 10 months of the year. By using the VPDC to meet seasonal workloads, these on-premise servers can be reallocated to enterprise applications.
• A well-known airline experiences an unforeseen load on its website following adverse weather conditions. By using the VPDC to access burstable capacity, the airline manages the uplift in traffic as passengers check flight advisories, without any noticeable impact to the user experience.
• A household-name consumer brand trials a new product variant which is not as popular as initially anticipated. After six months, the product is discontinued due to lack of uptake, but by releasing VPDC resource back to the pool, the project has avoided incurring significant IT write-downs.
• A bricks-and-mortar independent retailer is looking to set up an eCommerce portal. Rather than commit capital to in-house infrastructure, the retailer launches its online presence via the VPDC on a truly pay-as-you-grow basis.
6 By using VPDC to meet seasonal workloads, on-premise servers can be reallocated to enterprise applications.
Savvis has eCommerce in the bag
Savvis has been hosting eCommerce platforms for nearly two decades. Internet retailers including easyJet and Hallmark Digital trust us to power their online success. Savvis offers a comprehensive portfolio of infrastructure, network and application management across the eCommerce ecosystem. No matter what you sell or where you are along the eCommerce journey, we can support your commercial goals with the speed of implementation, accessibility, security and affordability of a retail-ready cloud environment, with our Virtual Private Data Centre. Combined with our global data centre footprint and network options ranging from Tier1 public IP access to private, low-latency connectivity, the VPDC offers a resilient, made-to-measure solution for any eCommerce application. You can expect:
• Infrastructure built on best-of-breed hardware – offering total platform-level redundancy and enterprise levels of availability, reliability and security, plus the necessary assurances around data jurisdiction.
• Flexible architecture – with multi-tiered storage and Quality-of-Service profiles to provide the best value for money.
• A standards-based approach – and partnerships with the hardware and virtualisation vendors favoured by enterprise customers.
• Massive scalability – for all virtual data centre services, with guaranteed capacity.
• A self-service portal – offering data centre provisioning through a web-based drag-and-drop interface to promote ease of use for both IT and non-technical professionals.
• An hourly metered service – with visibility and control over usage so you only buy what is needed.
• Request validation – including automated policy enforcement to help prevent human error or inappropriate requisitions.
• Hybrid capability – Savvis also offers enterprise cloud colocation and managed hosting that can complement the VPDC when engineered into a single,
integrated solution.
• A global presence – to provide a consistent service across your enterprise footprint anywhere in the world
• A flexible commercial agreement – with no minimum spend and no punitive contractual lock-in period.
But building the infrastructure is just the beginning. We can help you build an eCommerce ecosystem that securely serves your customers, builds your business and protects your brand, while reducing the capital expense of doing it yourself.
We offer a comprehensive menu of optional eCommerce solutions, including lifecycle management services, website monitoring, end-user monitoring, web analytics and more. Our team of professionals can help you build stronger connections with your customers and understand how your interactive campaigns are performing. We can also keep your business ahead of the technology curve and your eCommerce sites tuned to deliver nothing short of excellence for your customers.
8 Customer Spotlight:
Savvis races ahead of the competition with hybrid solution for Cancer Research UK
Challenge
Activity on Cancer Research UK’s “Race for Life” website is cyclical as publicity builds ahead of each summer’s events. The annual spike in activity was putting pressure on the charity’s hosting resource that was reaching end-of-life.
Solution
Savvis enabled the charity to retain non-production, development and disaster recovery services on its own infrastructure in colocation, with the production hosting going to a dedicated cloud supported by 24 hour monitoring.
Benefit
The flexibility of the hybrid cloud solution enables Cancer Research UK to make decisions faster while achieving substantial savings over traditional managed services — vital for a charity that has to make every penny count.
What could you achieve with Savvis powering your online presence?
To book an online VPDC democall +44(0)207 400 5600 Find out more about Savvis visit www.savvis.co.uk
about Savvis
Savvis, a CenturyLink company, provides industry-leading IT infrastructure solutions that keep enterprises powered for business in today’s ever-changing global marketplace. Combining deep, proven experience with personal
commitment, Savvis delivers cloud, colocation and managed-hosting services over advanced networks, enabling its clients to focus on their core environments and meet new market opportunities.
© 2013 CenturyLink, Inc. All rights reserved. The Savvis mark, logo and certain Savvis product names are the property of CenturyLink, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.
