Worlds second largest online auction site chooses TelecityGroup

Allegro Group selects high-density hosting to support growth across Europe

FRANKFURT: Allegro Group, Europe’s second largest online auction provider and largest e-commerce group in Eastern Europe has selected TelecityGroup to provide high-density managed hosting and disaster recovery services to guarantee a resilient trading platform as the company continues to expand throughout Europe.

Allegro Group runs more than 30 eCommerce websites across ten countries in Eastern Europe, allowing its over 12 million registered users to bid on items ranging from cars to clothes. More than nine million auctions are open on the trading platforms at any time, and this is currently growing by more than 40% year-on-year. To guarantee a continued reliable and secure service for its customers, Allegro Group decided to review its infrastructure.

Christian Maar, CIO at Allegro Group who worked on the project with infrastructure managers Szymon Banka and Marcin Mazurek, explained: “We previously ran all 30 sites from one data centre in Poland. With the growing popularity of online auction sites and over 1.5 million new users registering to our site every year, we wanted to guarantee they could cope with the demands being placed on them. We decided high-density hosting would provide us with the performance we required, and TelecityGroup offered a premium service.”

Allegro Group worked with TelecityGroup to design a tailored facility to support European-wide access to its sites, and uses a fully managed high-density solution in the Frankfurt data centre. Due to the nature of auction websites it is important the infrastructure can cope with large peaks in traffic when an auction ends. Frankfurt is an increasingly important internet hub in Europe and TelecityGroup’s facilities host the German internet exchange, DE-CIX, providing a highly connected environment which supports high-bandwidth traffic requirements.

Maar explains: “To support our bid to become the largest online auction provider in Europe it is essential our infrastructure is housed in state-of-the-art facilities and TelecityGroup’s Frankfurt data centre provides a secure, connected and reliable environment. This provides security against downtime, which is essential for an online ecommerce business such as ours.”

Martin Essig, Managing Director, TelecityGroup Germany says: “Online auction sites have a unique requirement in terms of the infrastructure required to suit their business model. Connectivity is vital in delivering a superior user experience across so many territories and through its partnerships with the internet exchanges, TelecityGroup data centres are prime locations for such commerce. We are delighted Allegro Group has selected us to support their expansion across Europe, and look forward to working with them.”

ABOUT ALLEGRO GROUP
Allegro Group is the largest e-commerce group in Eastern Europe and 2nd in the world of online auction services. The main part of the Allegro Group is Allegro.pl. The biggest online service in Central and East Europe with more than 800 employees, over 9 milion registered users and a Gross Merchandise Volume over 2 billion USD in 2008.
Allegro Group is the owner of online auction and related services in Poland, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia and Estonia with over 12 milions Users.
Allegro Group is part of the South African media group Naspers. http://www.naspers.com/index.cfm?content=7107

• Printable Version
• Email a friend