How IaaS helps companies in the field of trade: retail cases
Recently, we told how the business of delivering goods is changing - the growth of the e-commerce segment confronts it with new challenges, many of which can be managed by IaaS. Today we will continue to talk about retail and see who and how uses the virtual infrastructure .
/ Photos jenny.nash712 CC
Today IaaS goes hand in hand with e-commerce in its development. According to Accenture's analytical data , the volume of investment in this area from 2011 to 2016 increased 4 times - up to $ 15 billion. The largest retailers do not just bet on the virtual infrastructure, but restructure their business models based on the implementation of IaaS. There are several reasons for this.
')
Ian Bristow, founder of the online store Internet Fusion, one of the oldest British online retailers in the segment of sportswear and accessories, told how his company moved to the “cloud”. As the client base grew, the company independently increased the capacity of the IT infrastructure, but faced the problem of the availability of store sites for various audience segments.
Yang notes that the low level of accessibility, particularly on mobile platforms, led to a loss of more than 53% of visitors. Of course, the transition to IaaS by itself could not be an automatic solution to this problem, so the company used the expertise of the IaaS provider employees to analyze the situation and gradually move to the “cloud”.
Most of the IT infrastructure of Callaway Golf, a major manufacturer and seller of premium golf products, was physical until 2009. Data centers were located in different states, it was difficult to maintain and work with data. At the same time, the company does business abroad. Weekly server maintenance has caused downtime for some foreign offices.
Part of the workload was decided to transfer to the cloud environment. This helped cut costs and ensure high availability. In addition, it was possible to achieve savings of more than 300 thousand dollars a year on equipment.
/ Photo Polycart CC
In retail, accessibility of not only online storefronts, but also inventory information is important. Argos, a large UK retailer who manages a network of 850 traditional stores, an online store and a mobile app, provides cloud-based solutions to staff and customers with real-time inventory and delivery information using cloud solutions.
Due to the large number of channels available, customers have a choice of where and how to pick up the goods - in one of the large centers, in a small shop nearby, or to order delivery. Accurate information reduces the cases of unrecorded sales, which ultimately saves time and money for buyers and retailers.
Another process in which high availability is important is the back office. Retailer of sports nutrition FitnessBar.ru for a long time managed only one warehouse and an online store, but once decided to grow into a retail network. Prior to the opening of stores, the company managed with one server room. With the release of offline and increasing load, new challenges appeared, such as providing joint access to the accounting systems of goods. Instead of buying additional equipment, FitnessBar.ru chose the IT-GRAD cloud environment. The migration was carried out in one evening, and the retailer continued to scale up the business, maintaining a high level of availability of all services and uninterrupted operation of stores.
A large online ASOS apparel and accessories store has been operating since 2000. In 2016, his leadership decided to transfer part of the tasks to the virtual infrastructure. One of them is the collection and processing of data for recommendatory services.
There are more than 85 thousand products in the store's assortment, and the system of personal recommendations is designed to help customers find suitable offers and combine products with each other. Here, the virtual infrastructure is used to store customer profile data. The ASOS recommendation platform supports a number of machine learning models for calculating product relevance and the likelihood of whether a visitor is interested in them, whether they will be saved in the basket and whether they will buy it in the long run. The cloud database is responsible for ensuring that such calculations take milliseconds.
/ Photo perzon seo CC
German retailer Lesara uses internal recommendation systems. Analyzing information from a large number of sources, including from search queries and social networks, helps him make decisions about what clothes he will produce and sell.
The head of Lesara, Roman Kirsch, says : “We do not just know which new styles are popular now, but we can also determine which retro trends are back, which styles are no longer relevant, and this helps us to clearly manage our products.” With all these tasks, Lesara helps IaaS cope.
The growth of the online retailers segment affects the work of regular stores. Sales in American department stores from 2000 to 2016 decreased by a third . Therefore, many traditional stores are turning into omni and multi-channel - that is, they are present both online and offline at the same time. This entails the adoption of new technologies. In particular, it is expected that by 2020 the penetration of cloud technologies into retail will be 70%. Already, many companies use IaaS in their business. And here's how:
In the network of pet products, Pets at Home decided to bring the Sales Assist application to communicate with sellers and consultants with customers. It links the data of several hundred stores with an application. So buyers can get accurate information about the range and select the appropriate point of sale.
Dixons Carphone, Europe’s largest telecommunications retailer and electrical engineering retailer, was formed in 2014 after the merger of Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse.
The new group immediately faced the problem of an inefficient IT infrastructure — even before the merger, both outdated systems were rather cumbersome and became less and less efficient to maintain. As a solution, a new group of companies has chosen a hybrid cloud environment that combines a private network for a back office with a public one for customer-oriented applications.
/ Photos by JD Hancock CC
Another example of the “virtualization” of a complex system is RailCommerce , the electronic marketplace Wagon Exchange . The key factor in this case is scaling again. It acquires great importance in the case of marketplace goods and services.
The cloud allows the exchange to dynamically increase the nodes of the system for various functions when such requirements arise. In addition, RailCommerce operates on the territory of two countries - Russia and Kazakhstan - therefore, a company must actually comply with two laws on data protection. IT-GRAD helped RailCommerce solve this problem.
PS What we write about in the First blog about corporate IaaS:
PPS A couple of posts on the topic from the blog on Habré:
/ Photos jenny.nash712 CC
Today IaaS goes hand in hand with e-commerce in its development. According to Accenture's analytical data , the volume of investment in this area from 2011 to 2016 increased 4 times - up to $ 15 billion. The largest retailers do not just bet on the virtual infrastructure, but restructure their business models based on the implementation of IaaS. There are several reasons for this.
')
Availability level
Ian Bristow, founder of the online store Internet Fusion, one of the oldest British online retailers in the segment of sportswear and accessories, told how his company moved to the “cloud”. As the client base grew, the company independently increased the capacity of the IT infrastructure, but faced the problem of the availability of store sites for various audience segments.
Yang notes that the low level of accessibility, particularly on mobile platforms, led to a loss of more than 53% of visitors. Of course, the transition to IaaS by itself could not be an automatic solution to this problem, so the company used the expertise of the IaaS provider employees to analyze the situation and gradually move to the “cloud”.
Most of the IT infrastructure of Callaway Golf, a major manufacturer and seller of premium golf products, was physical until 2009. Data centers were located in different states, it was difficult to maintain and work with data. At the same time, the company does business abroad. Weekly server maintenance has caused downtime for some foreign offices.
Part of the workload was decided to transfer to the cloud environment. This helped cut costs and ensure high availability. In addition, it was possible to achieve savings of more than 300 thousand dollars a year on equipment.
/ Photo Polycart CC
In retail, accessibility of not only online storefronts, but also inventory information is important. Argos, a large UK retailer who manages a network of 850 traditional stores, an online store and a mobile app, provides cloud-based solutions to staff and customers with real-time inventory and delivery information using cloud solutions.
Due to the large number of channels available, customers have a choice of where and how to pick up the goods - in one of the large centers, in a small shop nearby, or to order delivery. Accurate information reduces the cases of unrecorded sales, which ultimately saves time and money for buyers and retailers.
Another process in which high availability is important is the back office. Retailer of sports nutrition FitnessBar.ru for a long time managed only one warehouse and an online store, but once decided to grow into a retail network. Prior to the opening of stores, the company managed with one server room. With the release of offline and increasing load, new challenges appeared, such as providing joint access to the accounting systems of goods. Instead of buying additional equipment, FitnessBar.ru chose the IT-GRAD cloud environment. The migration was carried out in one evening, and the retailer continued to scale up the business, maintaining a high level of availability of all services and uninterrupted operation of stores.
Work with advisory services
A large online ASOS apparel and accessories store has been operating since 2000. In 2016, his leadership decided to transfer part of the tasks to the virtual infrastructure. One of them is the collection and processing of data for recommendatory services.
There are more than 85 thousand products in the store's assortment, and the system of personal recommendations is designed to help customers find suitable offers and combine products with each other. Here, the virtual infrastructure is used to store customer profile data. The ASOS recommendation platform supports a number of machine learning models for calculating product relevance and the likelihood of whether a visitor is interested in them, whether they will be saved in the basket and whether they will buy it in the long run. The cloud database is responsible for ensuring that such calculations take milliseconds.
/ Photo perzon seo CC
German retailer Lesara uses internal recommendation systems. Analyzing information from a large number of sources, including from search queries and social networks, helps him make decisions about what clothes he will produce and sell.
The head of Lesara, Roman Kirsch, says : “We do not just know which new styles are popular now, but we can also determine which retro trends are back, which styles are no longer relevant, and this helps us to clearly manage our products.” With all these tasks, Lesara helps IaaS cope.
Operating activities
The growth of the online retailers segment affects the work of regular stores. Sales in American department stores from 2000 to 2016 decreased by a third . Therefore, many traditional stores are turning into omni and multi-channel - that is, they are present both online and offline at the same time. This entails the adoption of new technologies. In particular, it is expected that by 2020 the penetration of cloud technologies into retail will be 70%. Already, many companies use IaaS in their business. And here's how:
- Payment systems. The American department store chain Nordstrom , which operates hundreds of stores in most states, launched a cloud - based POS system last year. This approach allows you to quickly serve customers and efficiently use data - information about inventory and the popularity of product groups, customer information. IaaS in this case allows customers to work with any platform - the web version of the retailer's website or a mobile application.
- Communication. A large network of Russian stores of children's toys "World Hamleys" works using virtual infrastructure. Dozens of sales departments are connected into working groups around a single IaaS platform. In the IT-GRAD cloud, there are several communication channels: mail, cloud telephony, support line, and intercorporate communication. This eliminates the problem of the geographical fragmentation of the stores - all employees stay in touch - and allows centralized control of processes.
In the network of pet products, Pets at Home decided to bring the Sales Assist application to communicate with sellers and consultants with customers. It links the data of several hundred stores with an application. So buyers can get accurate information about the range and select the appropriate point of sale.
Scaling business
Dixons Carphone, Europe’s largest telecommunications retailer and electrical engineering retailer, was formed in 2014 after the merger of Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse.
The new group immediately faced the problem of an inefficient IT infrastructure — even before the merger, both outdated systems were rather cumbersome and became less and less efficient to maintain. As a solution, a new group of companies has chosen a hybrid cloud environment that combines a private network for a back office with a public one for customer-oriented applications.
/ Photos by JD Hancock CCAnother example of the “virtualization” of a complex system is RailCommerce , the electronic marketplace Wagon Exchange . The key factor in this case is scaling again. It acquires great importance in the case of marketplace goods and services.
The cloud allows the exchange to dynamically increase the nodes of the system for various functions when such requirements arise. In addition, RailCommerce operates on the territory of two countries - Russia and Kazakhstan - therefore, a company must actually comply with two laws on data protection. IT-GRAD helped RailCommerce solve this problem.
PS What we write about in the First blog about corporate IaaS:
- Cloud technologies in shipbuilding: production and information management
- How cloud IT infrastructure helps in the implementation of international projects
- IaaS in the tourism industry: IT-GRAD company cases
PPS A couple of posts on the topic from the blog on Habré:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/354570/
All Articles