Footwear retailer Office 'boots up' Rackspace Managed Cloud

Office, which has a global presence with more than 150 stores across Europe and the U.S. launched its first international eCommerce site at the beginning of this year as part of a wider move towards strategic business digitisation. As well as using Rackspace Private Cloud to support its existing desktop and mobile sites, Office will also be using Rackspace Managed Virtualisation offering to boost scalability capabilities.

Rackspace was initially recommended to Office by one of its channel partners Envoy Digital, an eCommerce specialist agency that works with the retailer to help deliver its omni-channel strategy. After a technical and commercial evaluation process, both Office and Envoy Digital decided that Rackspace Private Cloud would power the retailer's website effectively for it to remain fast and enabling transactions to be processed effectively, even during high traffic times.

Robin Worthington, Multichannel Director, Office says: "When working with any cloud provider, it's critical that they can ensure only a minimal amount of our time is spent overseeing the IT infrastructure so that it operates smoothly. This allows us to focus on what we're best at -- helping customers find the right shoes. That's why the managed cloud service from Rackspace is so valuable. Even in the fashion industry where it's common to see short bursts in sales as customers clamour to get the latest in demand styles, I know the Rackspace team of specialists can handle these peaks with ease. Having this expertise and support available 24/7/365 gives me peace of mind when we are gearing up for a busy season, sale or product launch."

To boost this scalability even further, Office uses Managed Virtualisation powered by VMware which allows it to reduce the amount of strain on its network at peak traffic load times. Load Balancers are also used to automatically and intelligently distribute workloads across various servers and resources. Office is using these technologies in harmony to help prevent overload and to maximise performance. The total combination of these technologies means that website visitors can get a fluid and responsive user experience, even at busy times during the summer festival season when the retailer's predominantly young customer base tends to make a flurry of purchases.

Envoy Digital uses the cloud to support hybris platform for Office's, eCommerce software driven omni-channel platform, including a Click and Collect service and in-store tablets which allow customers to place website orders for products not available in-store. These are all critical elements in reaching the retailer's goals, which include a target to at least double its omni-channel sales over the next three years. hybris, the omni channel software solution, will play a central role in achieving this, as it has formed a foundation for the expansion planned by the brand, including the recent launch of a German website.

The retailer's mobile website which was launched last year also runs on the Rackspace Private Cloud. Since being launched, the website has proved incredibly popular amongst the young target customer market that gravitate to the Office brand, with more than 60 percent of all web traffic now coming through mobile devices. The retailer has noticed a clear trend in terms of consumers initially browsing products on their mobile before making the purchase later via a laptop or desktop. In a short space of time it has become an essential part of its eCommerce strategy.

Jeff Cotten, MD Rackspace International, said: "It's an exciting time to be working with Office. In recent months, the company has launched its first website outside of the UK and opened stores in new regions, so its pace of expansion has real energy. A key requirement for any company managing this level of growth is having a reliable, high performance multichannel infrastructure in place. Moving into new markets is a big undertaking and the last thing any company wants to be worrying about is a website going down, but we take that worry away by offering access to a team of experts to design, build and run their IT infrastructure available at all times."