Business Problem: Accommodating increased traffic
Solution Summary: Monitor & manage server infrastructure
Profile:
Confetti.co.uk was launched online in February 1999 and is the UK’s number one wedding and party website with thousands of products, ideas and inspirations. As wedding specialists Confetti supply a full range of wedding products, from personalized stationary, through to table decorations. They also offer a full service to those who require advice on design themes and assist to make sure the big day runs without problems. Confetti product ranges and services are also available through their range of mail order catalogues and stores in Tottenham Court Road in London and The Light in Leeds. Confetti also opened a further store in Reading and earlier last year, prepared itself for the premiere of a film called Confetti. www.confetti.co.uk became involved in the production early on, and the store in London’s Tottenham Court Road was prominently featured at the start of the film.
Confetti is recognised by both Superbrands and ABC Electronic as the UK’s leading wedding and special occasion website with an audience of 729,061 unique users per month. Their web traffic has increased by 41% a year on, and is delivering 18.5 million page impressions per month.
The Problem:
Issues across the board with previous supplier for hosting and managed services and with the growth of the web traffic the future was not looking bright.
Key areas of concern were 24/7 support, management of all devices, SQL support, Hosting power and cooling problems and options to scale to a new platform.
Confetti relies on their website to generate their main source of revenue. It is therefore critical that their system is running at all times. Any down time not only means loss of sales, but reputation.
As the IT Director of Confetti Network stated, "With so much of our revenues being generated via confetti.co.uk and our reputation depending on the content and availability of the site, it's crucial that it's always up and running for business."
The Solution:
Prior to the new store opening last year and the film premiere, Confetti decided to work with ControlCircle and Redbus Interhouse UK, our strategic partners, to manage their entire website infrastructure. ControlCircle currently monitor & manage their entire server infrastructure, firewalls and network devices as well as managing their daily data back up.
ControlCircle manage a fully redundant highly available firewall and load balancer topology combining best of breed products such as Checkpoint and RSA.
As the IT Director of Confetti Network stated, “After carefully evaluating the options, we concluded that the combination of service level, speed of delivery, support and the extensive range of services offered by ControlCircle and Redbus Interhouse put them head and shoulders above the competition."
