CASE STUDY initial target of 100 % Infrastructure-as-Code was hit and automation was implemented as standard practice as widely as possible . Additionally , services and toolings were consolidated , reducing third-party partnerships and greatly increasing efficiency across the board . These changes drastically improved performance , with updates to the Dunelm site now taking minutes , rather than hours and website load speed improving by 978 %.
Cybersecurity repositioned as an enabler of innovation
Before Dunelm partnered with Fastly , security was a siloed issue . Ownership of security challenges was unclear , reporting was obscure and there was minimal observability , with inaccessible tools and fundamentals , such as WAF logs , unavailable for viewing .
The priorities for repositioning cybersecurity as a business priority were clear . There needed to be clear ownership and observability of security processes , security as code was implemented to enable to keep costs down and give teams flexibility and a shift left mindset was implemented across the organisation to ensure security was prioritised at the earliest stages of all product development .
Dunelm also reassessed how it responded to cybersecurity breaches as part of this process , removing any individual blame to instead focus on working as a team to resolve any issues . There was , however , still significant positioning work to be done to alter the way teams across Dunelm perceived cybersecurity . To rectify this reputation of cybersecurity blocking innovation , Dunelm launched its Security Champions initiative alongside its Secure Code initiative to position security as an enabler of innovation , encourage discussions and allow teams to showcase their ability to build new products while working in a security compliant way .
Jan Claeyssens , Devsecops Principal Engineer at Dunelm , discusses the collaboration in more detail and what ’ s on the horizon .
THE FIRST STEP IN ACHIEVING THIS
TECHNOLOGICAL SHIFT WAS TO TRANSFORM THE
MINDSET OF THE TEAMS WORKING AT DUNELM .
For external customers – no feedback to hand but we know they ’ ll be pleased with an average of 978 % improvement in page load speed on the Dunelm homepage .
How would you now describe your IT capabilities and how does this influence your competency as one of the UK ’ s leading retailers ?
We have created several strategic partnerships with vendors who are at the top of their game in their respective market segments . Combined with our fantastic engineers and the solid technical backbone we have created over the last five years this allows us to quickly adapt to a variety of economic challenges and be in control of our own future .
What ’ s in store for Dunelm ’ s digital future ?
We will continue to focus on further strengthening our product mastery , developing and enhancing our stores and digital channels , building out our marketing ecosystem , in order to create an even better experience for our customers . p
How has the collaboration with Fastly impacted the overall customer experience – have you received any feedback in the way of this ?
For our internal customer base , it has significantly increased our engineering and release capability . Developers can see the code and contribute to our Fastly codebase . We use a cookie-cutter approach to speed up deployment for new services . This approach also still allows for enough flexibility to tailor the configuration to the specific needs of a new microservice , providing the best of both worlds .
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