Virgin Wines toasts security with hosting deal

09 Nov 2006: Online retailer migrates servers to hosted data centre

Europe’s largest online wine retailer Virgin Wines is migrating servers to a hosted data centre to improve security and ensure constant availability of its web site.

The firm’s email customer relationship management (CRM) systems, including distribution lists, will be hosted alongside security and firewall services. Virgin Wines IT director Stuart Hunt says hosting deals have proved costly, but the firm does not have the staff to bring such services in-house.

‘Previous hosting contracts with Intel and Savvis were expensive and did not offer the out-of-hours support we needed. But we did not want to bring management of security, for example, in-house,’ he said.  ‘The security of customer data is the most important part of our business, ahead of selling wine, because people need to be confident when putting credit card details online.’

TelecityRedbus already hosts Virgin Wine’s security systems, including firewall and anti-virus servers, from its Docklands-based data centre. It has now been tasked with looking after the company’s email management and monitoring.

‘We are now going live with a hosted email service management, including managing the distribution list that is emailed every two weeks,’ said Hunt. ‘TelecityRedbus will also monitor our network.’

The network element of the agreement includes a service that allows TelecityRedbus to switch seamlessly between several ISPs if one encounters problems, ensuring reliability and speed of service. This is particularly important because Virgin Wine’s business is conducted online, with more than 300,000 cases of wine sold each year. Under a co-location agreement Virgin Wines maintains ownership of the hosted servers, while TelecityRedbus is responsible for the network and connectivity.

This story originally appeared in Computing, 9 November 2006.

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