RedBalloon and Pantha Corp among first to embrace AWS Cloud
Announcement posted by RedBalloon 03 Dec 2012
Fast growth website redballoon.com.au one of the first local websites to implement the new platform
3 December 2012 (Sydney): Australia’s leading online experience retailer redballoon.com.au is one of the first Australian businesses to implement the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud computing platform.
RedBalloon initiated the move to Cloud computing as part of a major digital overhaul undertaken at the beginning of 2011, and the two month implementation was completed in mid-July this year.
The transition required only 15 minutes of downtime from its previous on-premise environment at 6am on a Sunday morning. The last time the business switched server providers the high traffic website was down for almost 16 hours while a hard-drive was flown between Melbourne and Sydney to transfer the enormous amount of data.
As a fast-growing company repeating this sort of downtime was out of the question, yet RedBalloon realised 12 months ago that technology had become a growth inhibitor. The company was relying on 17 servers housed at a local data centre and needed many more to continue its growth.
RedBalloon General Manager of Development & Technology Paul Keen explains, “We needed a large number of servers because we were building a new infrastructure that required a service-oriented architecture. Buying more on-premise servers was cost-prohibitive so we opted to start from scratch entirely in the Cloud.”
“Our development partners Pantha Corp designed and commissioned the hosting service on AWS for us, and their expertise guaranteed we could use the full features of the Cloud model to deliver a faster return on investment with a lot less risk to the business and the customer experience.”
To achieve the project objectives, Pantha Corp set up an AWS platform to mirror the complex RedBalloon systems already in place, which enabled them to develop, test and deploy changes in a live environment without disruption to customers.
Today, the RedBalloon platform features over 150 servers in the Cloud, which cost the same as the previous 17. Almost the entire RedBalloon business now runs from the cloud – including website, fulfillment, ERP and CRM.
Pantha Corp also built an intuitive model for RedBalloon that sees more than 100 of their servers automatically shut down overnight when not in operation; delivering flexibility, scale and a significant cost saving to RedBalloon every day.
“We reviewed several local and international providers and chose AWS because we were looking for technology and partners that could enable us to scale very fast, while keeping costs low,” Mr Keen said.
“An important side benefit of our move to cloud is a more resilient Disaster Recovery (DR) program. We see 40 per cent of our turnover during December, so we cannot afford downtime at the pointy end of the year.
“The Cloud DR program means our business can keep operating via remote servers if the Sydney office network goes down. This frees employees to work remotely, an important feature of RedBalloon’s commitment to being a top employer.”
Sydney-based RedBalloon was founded in 2001 by Naomi Simson to offer meaningful experiences and has grown into a $50 million business, poised to achieve its $100 million revenue goal by 2015. It has 60 employees and has been ranked in BRW magazine’s Best Places to Work four years consecutively. It has also been named a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 company six times since 2006.
- ENDS –
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:
Lauren Ashton – RedBalloon: 02 8755 0034, lauren@redballoon.com.au
About RedBalloon
RedBalloon has been giving people the chance to fulfil their dreams for 11 years in Australia and New Zealand, and has supplied more than 1.5 million memorable experiences in this time. With over 3000 unique gift ideas and experience gift vouchers like race car driving, hot air ballooning, horse riding on the beach, tiger moth flights to massages, romantic dinners and getaways, RedBalloon has the perfect present for any occasion. RedBalloon experience vouchers, gift certificates and gift boxes can be purchased online or in selected retail outlets.
About Pantha Corp
Pantha Corp is a digital transformation and Agile IT consulting company that works closely with its clients to identify and solve problems affecting their entire organisation. Pantha Corp have provided strategy, software solutions and business transformation to organisations including RedBalloon, Sydney Airport, News Corporation (Career One), Merck Serono, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
RedBalloon initiated the move to Cloud computing as part of a major digital overhaul undertaken at the beginning of 2011, and the two month implementation was completed in mid-July this year.
The transition required only 15 minutes of downtime from its previous on-premise environment at 6am on a Sunday morning. The last time the business switched server providers the high traffic website was down for almost 16 hours while a hard-drive was flown between Melbourne and Sydney to transfer the enormous amount of data.
As a fast-growing company repeating this sort of downtime was out of the question, yet RedBalloon realised 12 months ago that technology had become a growth inhibitor. The company was relying on 17 servers housed at a local data centre and needed many more to continue its growth.
RedBalloon General Manager of Development & Technology Paul Keen explains, “We needed a large number of servers because we were building a new infrastructure that required a service-oriented architecture. Buying more on-premise servers was cost-prohibitive so we opted to start from scratch entirely in the Cloud.”
“Our development partners Pantha Corp designed and commissioned the hosting service on AWS for us, and their expertise guaranteed we could use the full features of the Cloud model to deliver a faster return on investment with a lot less risk to the business and the customer experience.”
To achieve the project objectives, Pantha Corp set up an AWS platform to mirror the complex RedBalloon systems already in place, which enabled them to develop, test and deploy changes in a live environment without disruption to customers.
Today, the RedBalloon platform features over 150 servers in the Cloud, which cost the same as the previous 17. Almost the entire RedBalloon business now runs from the cloud – including website, fulfillment, ERP and CRM.
Pantha Corp also built an intuitive model for RedBalloon that sees more than 100 of their servers automatically shut down overnight when not in operation; delivering flexibility, scale and a significant cost saving to RedBalloon every day.
“We reviewed several local and international providers and chose AWS because we were looking for technology and partners that could enable us to scale very fast, while keeping costs low,” Mr Keen said.
“An important side benefit of our move to cloud is a more resilient Disaster Recovery (DR) program. We see 40 per cent of our turnover during December, so we cannot afford downtime at the pointy end of the year.
“The Cloud DR program means our business can keep operating via remote servers if the Sydney office network goes down. This frees employees to work remotely, an important feature of RedBalloon’s commitment to being a top employer.”
Sydney-based RedBalloon was founded in 2001 by Naomi Simson to offer meaningful experiences and has grown into a $50 million business, poised to achieve its $100 million revenue goal by 2015. It has 60 employees and has been ranked in BRW magazine’s Best Places to Work four years consecutively. It has also been named a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 company six times since 2006.
- ENDS –
For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:
Lauren Ashton – RedBalloon: 02 8755 0034, lauren@redballoon.com.au
About RedBalloon
RedBalloon has been giving people the chance to fulfil their dreams for 11 years in Australia and New Zealand, and has supplied more than 1.5 million memorable experiences in this time. With over 3000 unique gift ideas and experience gift vouchers like race car driving, hot air ballooning, horse riding on the beach, tiger moth flights to massages, romantic dinners and getaways, RedBalloon has the perfect present for any occasion. RedBalloon experience vouchers, gift certificates and gift boxes can be purchased online or in selected retail outlets.
About Pantha Corp
Pantha Corp is a digital transformation and Agile IT consulting company that works closely with its clients to identify and solve problems affecting their entire organisation. Pantha Corp have provided strategy, software solutions and business transformation to organisations including RedBalloon, Sydney Airport, News Corporation (Career One), Merck Serono, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).