News

Domino's UK moving ahead with infrastructure growth

July 5, 2011

Domino's Pizza U.K. has selected Rackspace Hosting to provide the company with an integrated cloud hosting and dedicated managed hosting service. The service will give Domino's a scalable and cost-effective platform that will support the execution of the company's ambitious growth strategy, according to a press release.

Key to the growth strategy is online ordering, which increased 63 percent in 2010. Rackspace Hosting will help improve the system that Domino's has been working on this year. It recently signed a deal with Kcom to provide connectivity between each of its 660-plus stores across the United Kingdom and Ireland.

"In 2010, over a third of our UK delivered orders were taken online, so having a reliable hosting solution is essential to our continued success," said Colin Rees, Domino's IT Director. " I knew that we needed to outsource our hosting infrastructure if we were to remain on our current growth trajectory and keep improving our customer experience. We wanted the best of both worlds, though: the high level of security and configurability that dedicated managed hosting affords a business, and the scalability of cloud hosting. Rackspace's RackConnect solution ticks all these boxes and more."

RackConnect will enable Domino's to select which applications are placed where in the managed hosting infrastructure. For example, applications that require a high level of security, such as an internal email system, can be hosted on dedicated physical hardware. Domino's will also be able to take advantage of the on-demand scalability of The Rackspace Cloud for developing new smartphone or tablet applications, or handling the demands of a digital marketing campaign.

"Domino's Pizza is paving the way when it comes to effective e-commerce and engaging with customers online in a wide variety of ways, such as through social media or smartphone and tablet apps," said David Kelly, Rackspace SVP International.

Domino's hosting platform is expected to go live in September this year. Hosted applications will include the public-facing ecommerce site www.dominos.co.uk, as well as the online payment gateway, corporate email, back-office systems and the company intranet.