handling ecommerce traffic spikes

New thinking for an unpredictable world

FLATBusiness would be so easy

in a flat, predictable world.

+

A world where sales in November look pretty much like sales in October.And December. And May.

+

A world where demand just naturally reaches a point of equilibrium. And stays there

NOTBut that’s

the world we live in.

We live in a

world.

SPIKY

FADSFADS

A WORLD OF FADS AND

BOOMS AND BUBBLES.

FADSFADS FADSFADSFA

DS

FADS

FADS

FADS

FADS

FADS

BOOMBOOM

BOOMBOOM

BOOMBOOM

BOOMBOOM

and 7,000,000 switchboards light up.

A TV talent show says

“The voting lines are open!”

A world where sales in November look pretty much like sales in October.And December. And May.

posts a photo of her new bag and the company’s website crashes.

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Katy Perry @Katy Perry • 6 Feb

the world is actually getting

spikier, not flatter.

And here’s the thing:

In a world with Facebook and Snapchat and smartphones –

significant crowds can form,

swell and disperse in

minutes.

SWARM.

Today, people don’t trickle,

they...

And graphs that used to look flat and stable…

…can suddenly look like these.

+ +

+ +

Periodic

Bursting The Daily Cycle

Cyclical

Some spikes are predictable.

Christmas comes every year (woo-hoo!).

The Olympics don’t exactly spring up out of nowhere. Travel companies know when the booking stampede

is coming.

UK RETAILERS SEE A 31% BOXING DAY SPIKE

Other spikes are completely unexpected.A storm approaches a city and 60,000 shopping carts fill with duct tape.

Manchester United makes a substitution and the betting sites go ballistic.

They mean your business has hit a home run.

Some spikes are hugely

POSITIVE.

Like traffic to a support portal when a major problem

has infuriated a couple million customers.

Other spikes are

DISASTROUS.

Handle allthese spikes

But in every case, it’s critical to your business

to be able to

To keep those applications running.And that’s the problem.

doesn’t really shine in a spiky world.

Because traditional

I.T.

UNDER CAPACITY MEANS BIG THINGS ARE LOST:RevenueCustomersReputationOpportunityInnovation

OVER CAPACITY MEANS BIG THINGS ARE WASTED:CashInvestmentFlexibilityChoicePeople

BIG

Over or under capacity?You decide.

CLASSIC CAPACITY

CAPEX

OVERCAPACITY

UNDERCAPACITY

+DEMAND

Traditional IT forces youinto a terrible choice:

Build and provision a stack of dedicated serversto handle the maximum capacity.

That’s expensive and wasteful. All that

capacity sits idle 99% of the time – but you pay for it 100% of the

time.

AScale your infrastructure

for normal life – and get impaled on the

next spike. Not really a sustainable strategy

for an increasingly spiky world.

B

That’s where theHybrid Cloud

comes in.

The Hybrid Cloud is a new way of delivering IT to the business – and it supports Cloudbursting,

a perfect way to handle without throwing ridiculous money at

the problem.

The idea issimple:

Provision your servers to handle normal demand.

Then set up the ability to spin up servers in the cloud,for when the spikes come.

(And spin them back down again when they pass).

Quickly, Efficiently. Cost effectively.

Cloudbursting: Own the core. Rent the spikes.

On-premise servers.

TRA

FFIC

TIME-1 YEAR

DEDICATED CLOUD

ON-DEDICATED CLOUD

PUBLIC CLOUD BURST

This simple idea has

changed the way many of the best-run businesses in

the world think about spikes.

Businesses like Flowers shops.(Valentines Day is the mother

of all spikes for florists).

They’ve discovered thata Hybrid Cloud

approach...

...delivers theBest of both

worlds

Insane levels of scal-ability – that eat spikes for lunch (but that very few private data centers could ever match).

Optimum use of the IT budget – with low-cost hard-ware for normal demand and pay-as-you-go servers for the spikes.

Happier customers – because your business is there when they need you.

Lots more money –because you rose to the massive demand instead of collapsing just when the revenue was pouring in.

Much less risk – because you can now handle just about any-thing.

72% OF CUSTOMERS LEAVE A SITE TAKING OVERTWO SECONDS TO LOAD

different perspective

All of a sudden, spikes aren’t sinister stampedes that threaten

your ability to cope. They’re just business as usual

(at exponential scales).

When you set up the ability to doyou find you’ve got a totally

For the first time, businesses like yours can stop worrying

and learn to love this crazy, connected, unpredictable world

of oursthis crazy, connected, unpredictable world of ours

SPIKE

SURFthe steepest

spikes with a big smile on your face.

With preparation, you can

The Hybrid Cloud is a huge leap forward Businesses in control of spikes can innovate rather than just operate.

14% INNOVATING

66% OPERATING20% ENHANCING

Some apps just can’t live in the cloud. Some commercial licenses prohibit it. And sometimes there’s a better way to solve your specific challenges.

So find someone who can give you good advice – someone who can deliver any strategy whether it’s public cloud, private cloud, hosted, on-premise or a combination of all of them.

So they don’t have any hidden agenda.*

But it’s not for every application or every situation.

And if your business is subject to spikes – or you can imagine some run-on-the-bank scenarios that could bring your systems down – you really ought to investigate the Hybrid Cloud model and the Cloudbursting approach.

*Oh look. You found one. [link to Rackspace UK]

Here are some resources to help:

The good news:

that’s easy to do, too.

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