Funkypigeon.com

Our AWS Journey

Ian Page

Ian Page

Network and

Infrastructure

Manager

Funkypigeon – A potted history

• Established in April 2009

• Purchased by a major high street

retailer in 2010

• We have achieved national

recognition of the brand which is in

the top three of the most

remembered adverts - You’ve all

seen the TV ads

A bit of background

• Peaks and Troughs – FP business is very peaky – Valentine’s Day, Mothers Day,

Fathers Day, Christmas, TV Advertising, etc.

• Previous solution overview – Traditional Hosted solution using physical hardware

So why did we need to change?

• Redundant Capacity (High cost)

• Lack of elasticity (Inability to scale on demand)

• Lack of centralised content/controls (Manual

deployment processes)

• Limited testing environment (Difficulty

conducting comparable tests)

• Security and PCI Compliance

What were our requirements?

• Had to be a quick project due to trading peaks (3 months

or less)

• Had to be a simple lift and shift migration

• Had to be able to scale to meet demand

• Chosen solution had be resilient

• Had to have the appropriate tools for monitoring the

services and the spend

• Had to be a more or less seamless transition

How did we decide upon AWS and CloudReach?

• Scalable infrastructure to cater for trading peaks

• Resilient solution

• Flexibility

• Service and support wrapper inclusive of

monitoring

• Expertise and on-demand assistance

• Cost

What were the results and benefits?

• Secure, scalable solution

• Resilience

• Testing and staging environments

• Ongoing cost benefits

• Far superior support and monitoring both

technically and commercially

Comparison

So, what’s next?

• Review of current storage with a view to move to

cheaper S3 storage

• Scaling mobile application services

• CloudFront for static content

• Continued advances in new products – Mobile Covers and Cases

– Large Posters

– Multi photo upload Calendars

Thank you