Case study: eSpares and business continuity

Online electricals business has managed to decrease its downtime

From Computing magazine:

The importance of uptime is not lost on Jason Duffett. As systems director for fast-growing online business eSpares, he knows that without its online shop window, the business grinds to a halt.

“If the site is down, we are making no money,” he says. “If a visitor goes to our site and it is not available, a potential customer is left with a poor perception of eSpares, and we don’t want that because we work in a very competitive environment.”

Nevertheless, eSpares’ approach to business continuity has evolved rapidly. “In 2003, the business was a very small operation and the site ran on an off-the-shelf e-commerce solution,” says Duffett. “In 2005, we looked at how the infrastructure worked and where it was not working and decided to design our own system to run the site, ironing out points of failure and giving us better control over how we grew. Business continuity started off as quite important, but it then became crucial.”

The site, which sells more than 300,000 different spare parts for electrical appliances from more than 500 manufacturers, has six million unique users per year. Those online customers generate 90 per cent of its business, while the other 10 per cent come through a call centre.

The company decided that the technical challenge of keeping its web site operational would best be handled by a third party.

“We made the decision to move to a hosted environment for extra resilience. It also offloads concerns about power supplies and network connectivity, and the cost benefit of moving to TelecityGroup has been huge,” says Duffett.

The company worked with a number of hosting companies in 2005, but now TelecityGroup hosts all critical systems including its web site, content management system, stock control system and warehouse system.

Before signing on the dotted line, eSpares looked at which other companies used TelecityGroup, and factors such as uptime history, redundancy in its power systems and service level agreements.

“We went through everything, looking at issues such as the level of uninterruptible power supplies, backup generators and how long it can keep running if there is a power outage,” says Duffett.

“I am now free to work on new projects to enhance the IT infrastructure and improve the web site and customer experience,” he adds. Every nine months, eSpares reviews what extra requirements it needs within the datacentre due to new projects. “As our business grows and we make improvements to the site, we need to grow systems, and TelecityGroup gives us scalability,” says Duffett.

http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/features/2231727/hosted-environment-ensures-4370973

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