Åhléns

Challenge

Operating partner of e-commerce with high demands on performance and availability

Axstores, like Åhléns, is part of the Axel Johnson Group. When they were commissioned to create and launch the awaited e-commerce of the department store, they needed an operations partner that could ensure availability around the clock. As told by Olof Svedberg, Service Delivery Manager at Axstores.
He continues:

- In addition, we needed help implementing a product information system closely linked to the e-commerce. We chose Binero (RedBridge) as our partner. The reason, says Olof Svedberg, was that we could see a good track record and recommendations from others in the industry.

Shortly after the launch of the e-commerce, Åhléns decided to digitize their customer loyalty system, which handles bonuses and offers.

- It was a completely new solution, which had very high availability requirements. A system like this must always work, in store and online, wherever our customers may be at any moment.

Solution

Cloud or traditional solution?

Axstores was faced with a choice: would the bonus system be built as a cloud service or as a traditional data solution in a server hall?

- It felt very good that Binero (RedBridge) was able to offer both cloud services and traditional operations.

Once we described what we wanted to achieve, it became an open question to them which solution they recommended. Binero gave us very good guidance and support for that decision. It felt safe and they could motivate their recommendation in a good way, says Olof Svedberg.

Results

Performance was the deciding factor

A traditional server solution was chosen.

- For our organization, it did not matter if we chose the cloud or a traditional solution. What was important was the performance and availability. Binero (Redbridge) stated that in our case, it would work well to run the solution in the cloud using autoscaling, and have the system scale itself depending on the work load at any given time. But using that alternative would have led to higher costs in order to achieve the performance we required.

Axstore realized that they were able to quickly call for increased capacity when a situation of high traffic loads were approaching. These events can often be foreseen because the increases in traffic tend to be linked to campaigns that are launched by Åhléns themselves.

- The end result was a well-balanced combination of price and performance, says Olof Svedberg.