Peugeot has been going into detail about its use of Claranet as a hosting provider after the car maker’s previous Managed Services Provider collapsed.
The car manufacturer was forced into finding a quick and suitable replacement to provide hosting and it would appear that Claranet has proven itself to be able to capably fulfil the services that Peugeot required.
Vijay Mistry, Manager, Technical Services, PSA Peugeot Citroen, said: "Beyond our primary site, we also operate a number of distinct tactical campaign microsites which are intrinsically linked to our marketing operations."
"These sites, which attract a considerable number of visitors each month, serve as valuable platforms for customer engagement and interaction, and ultimately help to drive brand loyalty and sales.
"These sites also hold our online booking engine for test drives, which helps us to feed tangible sales leads to our dealerships."
"When our old provider folded, we needed to act quickly to find a new one to maintain the delivery of our microsites and avoid any negative impact on the business."
After the previous provider collapsed and Claranet were chosen as a replacement, Peugeot’s microsites were migrated to Claranet’s managed hosting environment where Claranet manages and monitors the infrastructure and applications.
Over time the less business-critical applications in Peugeot’s IT estate were migrated to Claranet’s unmanaged environment where Claranet provides technical support up to the operating system level, while Peugeot’s technical team supports the applications themselves.
Mistry, said: "Our primary concern is ensuring that our externally facing apps perform as they should, so it makes sense to have an additional layer of management in place. But for internal functions, such as our dealer support and communications applications, which are less critical to our business, a lower level of management is sufficient."
"Dividing our applications in this way makes most business sense for us and is a more efficient use of our time and resources."
Due to the unforeseen collapse of the previous provider it was imperative to find a new supplier quickly and to implement them quickly. Mistry said: "The main constraint with this project was time. Our previous supplier collapsed in quite a sudden and dramatic fashion, giving us only a short time to find a new hosting provider."
"Claranet fully appreciated the situation and the pressure that we were under, and responded accordingly. Typically a migration project like this could take over a month to complete from start to finish; that Claranet were able to deliver the solution within such a short space of time is an absolute credit to them."
