Cloud services solve fashion retailerÂ’s peak trading challenge

Cloud services solve fashion retailer’s peak trading challenge

Fashion retailer French Connection has seen an improvement in the performance of its website during peak periods, following the introduction of Maginus Cloud Services from multichannel retail and distribution software provider, Maginus.

The Maginus hosting solution is helping the retailer to eliminate previous poor website performance issues, deal with peak traffic and help it scale into the future. French Connection is benefiting from the Maginus model of paying for capacity as and when it is required. Basic costs are based on normal transaction requirements so French Connection’s costs only increase when it needs extra bandwidth during peak periods.

Doug Gardener, French Connection IT director, said: “We needed to upgrade our existing e-commerce solution to a modern resilient, scalable and high performance platform. During Christmas we required twice the normal capacity with a peak requirement of five times our normal capacity in the middle of the month. This was all handled without any intervention in the Maginus cloud.”

Expanding into the cloud

French Connection expects its transactional volumes to continue to rise and these will be handled automatically by the Maginus Cloud services. The retailer will also move its other brand, Toast, onto the Maginus Cloud in 2011.

Gardener added: “Maginus will help us to maximise the potential of our website, providing added value for money.”

Simon Dunleavy, Maginus director of managed services, said: “We are working together with French Connection’s existing e-commerce development business to offer a partnership that gives French Connection a central contact for any issues, whether relating to the site or to hosting. We can deploy and host these solutions quickly, safely and securely via our Cloud Services, leaving businesses like French Connection to get on with running its day-to-day business.”