CIO opinion
However, to draw on a couple of examples,
we have some customers’ whose business is
doing so phenomenally well that they need
support in ensuring their IT infrastructure
is able to support it. For example, Boozt is
one of the fastest growing online fashion
and beauty companies, which found the
demands on its systems were increasing in
line with its popularity – particularly around
peak periods. To support the company’s small
team in managing the growth in and influxes
in traffic, we worked with Boozt to migrate
to Google Cloud Platform. This helped it
manage a 40% hike in customer visits over
this particular period – equating to around
50,000 new customers – without a minute of
downtime or any performance issues.
Whereas for Trading Point, a large and
well-established international investment
online brokerage firm, the internal IT team
needed to focus on driving value back to
the business’ core competencies, so the
company started looking for a strategic
partner to take on the management of
hardware infrastructure and support the
firm in the maintenance of its systems.
High reliability and low latency are key
to ensuring that Trading Point is able to
continuously deliver its superior service to its
customers. So, for Rackspace, the challenge
lay in ensuring that the IT infrastructure was
scalable, optimised and secure.
Rackspace recently announced a
significant expansion of its operations
in Europe. How do these European
markets differ and why did Rackspace
choose to expand in these areas?
Last year, we announced that Rackspace
would be embarking on its most ambitious
EMEA expansion plan to date, investing
heavily in growing its footprint in Germany
and Northern Europe – something that I am
personally very excited about.
One reason for this expansion is that
we’ve seen massive demand from German
companies for local expertise, as well as
having the breadth, depth and scale to
support them at every stage in their cloud
journey. Traditionally in Germany, many
firms have been slower to start out on their
cloud journey and with their high focus on
data security and privacy, having that local
support and expertise has been an important
factor to reassure them that they’ll still be
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INTELLIGENTCIO
able to provide the same level of service and
data protection to their customers.
In the Netherlands, however, the market is
a little more mature, with many companies
having already embarked on their cloud
journey. With our customers in this area,
we saw heightened demand to support
them as they take their next steps on their
cloud adoption journey and in helping them
understand how they can use it to improve
sales and drive greater revenue.
What trends are impacting CIOs
the most and how is Rackspace
supporting customers?
One of the biggest challenges CIOs face is
ensuring they’re able to deliver value from
their cloud and Digital Transformation
projects at cost. A recent global survey
of business and IT leaders found that
several years into their migration, 40% of
businesses said their cloud migration costs
were still higher than expected.
Ensuring that our customers are able to use
their budget to best accelerate the value of
the cloud in their organisation is key. One
way we’re assisting them with this is through
the launch of our new subscription cloud
model, Service Blocks. This works similarly to
bolt-on data plans, where you can increase
your service based on your immediate needs.
For your mobile this might be more data
to entertain your kids on a long card
journey, in the cloud this could be providing
additional expertise to support you in a
specific project – whether that’s a ‘Cost
Governance as a Service’ or ‘Solution
Architect as-a-Service’ to build complex
cloud architectures.
Lowering the barrier to consume these
new services will enable our customers
accelerate their value to the cloud and
ensure that they have the right support
when embarking on more complex tasks.
Six week waits for statements of work are
now dead.
We know our customers crave flexibility,
the ability to scale up and down and
customisable offerings – whether that’s in
their operations, resource requirements or
service engagements – and that its ultimately
critical for their success in the cloud. n
www.intelligentcio.com