Case studies

GardenSite

Solutions Mitigate Risk
Services Resilience
Sector Retail
Platforms VMware, Zerto

Gardensite.co.uk is an e-commerce site that launched back in 1999, when the internet was still in its infancy. After 18 years of gaining experience and a good reputation, they’ve grown to be one of the biggest retailers of home and garden products within the UK. They sell thousands of products, from seed and plants to sheds and greenhouses, and their website allows them to reach a wide consumer base in both the UK and worldwide.

Challenge

As GardenSite grew, they faced these challenges:

  • Needed a more flexible and updated IT infrastructure
  • Concerns over security and speed of their website
  • Needed to achieve full PCI-DSS compliance
  • Wanted to promise security and due diligence to their customers
  • Increased website transactions
  • Unable to handle the increased traffic caused by finer weather and large marketing campaigns
  • Needed a comprehensive DR plan

Solution

GardenSite began partnering with SysGroup to comprehensively address all their IT concerns and create a custom solution. Technically speaking, this included:

  • Hosting GardenSite’s production applications at a primary site on a VMware cluster
  • Hosting their DR environment in AWS EU-Ireland region, which is always on, and can be accessed anytime by SysGroup
  • A dedicated encrypted IPSec tunnel carries the continuous reproduction data traffic between the primary & DR site
  • Zerto Virtual Replication controls the failover process in test and live situations

Results

Key results achieved:

  • Speed & security
  • Full support from the SysGroup team to establish an on-going DR plan
  • Meeting PCI-DSS regulations to promise secure shopping to their customers
  • Able to process more transactions than ever before
  • Able to commence a TV advertisement marketing campaign with confidence that their website could managed the increased traffic