Waitrose cuts down on IT costs with monitoring software

Waitrose had to review its IT to cope with a surge of online transactions

Waitrose has introduced performance monitoring software to avoid extra spending on its e-commerce infrastructure and guarantee availability.

The system rollout was prompted by an IT strategic planning exercise ahead of the last Christmas trading period. The firm found it needed to increase server capacity by 30 to 40 per cent to handle the online traffic increase generated by its free home delivery service.

With the new software – currently covering under-performing SQL statements in Waitrose’s IBM e-commerce platform – the retailer can specify areas for performance improvement instead of totally replacing existing IT assets.

According to the retailer, the main benefits of the system are avoiding hardware and software "quick fixes" and the ability to find ways to reduce the amount of processing power.

The software was supplied by Precise.