Skyscanner, a travel-search website, has been working with Dell to build new converged data centres in the UK and Singapore, with plans to deploy in Hong Kong this month.
The website has had an 84% increase in traffic and had more than 25m mobile app downloads in 2013, so it sought an IT partner to support its global growth ambitions. Skyscanner has moved away from hosted IT resources and has built its own data centres in Europe and Asia to support its customers around the world.
Each data centre site was equipped with multiple Dell Converged Blade Data Center solutions, which combine Dell EqualLogic blade arrays, servers, switching and management to provide an entire data centre within a single blade enclosure and helping to streamline IT management and operations. Skyscanner deployed EqualLogic hybrid SSD arrays, which auto-tier application data to provide optimal performance for Skyscanner’s priority workloads.
EqualLogic’s all-inclusive licensing model will mean that Skyscanner has the potential to reduce its IT infrastructure costs by up to one-third over a three-year period.
Skyscanner worked closely with Dell IT Advisory Services throughout the implementation process, and this relationship will continue now that the infrastructure is installed to ensure that Skyscanner benefits from performance reporting and analytics, which offer insight into how existing resources can be optimised.
Aisling Keegan, general manager and executive director for Preferred Accounts, Dell UK commented: "Web-based services across the world are experiencing great market opportunities as consumers and businesses increasingly spend online. As these organisations grow and become more successful, the challenge of providing a consistently high quality of service becomes crucial to long-term success. Dell’s converged end-to-end solutions and services provide the scalability, flexibility and performance required to help organisations deploy powerful data centre environments to support heavy demand and accommodate rapid business growth."
