Online retailer Play.com has upgraded its data storage technology to manage rapid sales growth and peaks in demand.
The DVD, CD and games firm, established in 1998, is the UK’s third most-visited online retailer and required a reliable and flexible system to deal with orders from its four million customers.
‘As an online retailer, our main value is our data, so we needed a system that offered total confidence in the robustness of our storage infrastructure,’ said Play.com IT director Graham Benson. ‘We experienced significant growth and this has created large storage requirements.’
Play.com has peaks and troughs in customer use throughout the year, but Christmas is its biggest challenge.
‘Anybody who works in retail will know that there is a significant peak in demand at Christmas time,’ said Benson.
Over the festive period last year, Play.com saw music sales increase 37 per cent, DVDs increased eight per cent and video games sales rose 50 per cent.
Pillar Data Systems has installed its Pillar Axiom system, which is providing storage area network and network attached storage from the same storage pool.
The system is also robust enough to support Play.com’s Oracle database environment that underpins its online business.
Benson says the technology is flexible and easy-to-manage. It consolidates multiple tiers of storage in one system with a capacity of hundreds of terabytes.
He says the system is sufficiently scalable to meet the firm’s future needs and is key to Play.com’s overall IT strategy.
‘We believe technology is key to our success and growth. We invest in our IT systems heavily because, while some see technology as a necessary evil, we see it as a differential from our competitors,’ he said.
High-street brands failing onlineMusic to the ears
* Play.com, the third-largest online retailer in the UK, is updating its storage technology to cope with rapid growth and meet demand in peak periods.
* At Christmas last year music sales grew 37 per cent, DVD sales rose eight per cent and video game sales doubled.
* Play.com is putting technology at the centre of plans to grow its four-million-strong customer base.
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