Pets at Home adopts Claranet to underpin its customer-centric strategy
Pets at Home, the UK’s leading specialist retailer of pet food, accessories and services, has selected Claranet to supply and upgrade its wide area network (WAN) to underpin its growth plans and support the further development of a seamless shopping experience for its customers.
To achieve these aims the company is upgrading its core network and recognises the benefits of having a single, dedicated partner with the expertise and resources to help deliver its ambitious plans.
Claranet will roll out a brand new WAN to more than 400 retail locations and around 340 veterinary surgeries around the UK, to ensure the performance of the retailer’s business-critical applications, providing the foundations Pets at Home needs to underpin its seamless approach. With store connectivity being critical to the retailer’s operations, Claranet will also provide 3G MPLS connectivity as a back-up, meaning that the business can still process transactions securely in the event of a network outage.
Jamie Lowe, Infrastructure Manager at Pets at Home said: “As a business we have undergone, and are still undergoing, a significant amount of change as we look to broaden the services we offer and improve our customer’s experience. Connectivity in our retail estate is an essential commodity, and customers have come to expect a seamless experience when transacting with us, be it on our website, in our retail outlets, or in combination through click and collect. Having the right network in place to support us is critical. Moreover, we need the right support structures and mechanisms in place so that, as and when issues arise, they can be rectified straightaway.
“Migrating a network of this size and complexity comes with a number of risks but it was very clear early on that Claranet understood our plans for growth and have the right experience with projects such as this to provide the reliable service and support we need to underpin the business,” Jamie Lowe continued.
Simon Bearne, Claranet’s UK sales director, added: “We fully appreciate the importance of connectivity to Pets at Home’s business operations and growth ambitions so have designed a solution that meets their exact business needs. Shoppers can be extremely unforgiving of down time so we have placed an extra emphasis on reliability and uptime. With the new WAN and 3G MPLS, Pets at Home will be provided with an ultra-reliable network infrastructure that will support current and future internal and external communications, application and service delivery needs.”
About Claranet
Founded in 1996, Claranet has evolved from being a pioneering ISP (Internet Service Provider) into one of the leading independent MSPs (Managed Services Provider) in Europe, offering businesses integrated network and hosting services. It was recently recognised as a ‘Leader’ in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, Europe (2014). The company has annual revenues in excess of £140 million (€195 million), circa 800 employees, and an international footprint in six countries. While Claranet has grown internationally, the focus has always been on local service, out of local offices, using local data centres. The company completed acquisitions in late 2012 of Star (in the UK), Typhon (in France), CGEST (in Portugal), and more recently in 2014, of Echiron (Portugal), Grita (France), and NovaData (The Netherlands).
Claranet brings together the best people, process and technology to provide flexible, secure and cost-effective managed services that guarantee network and application performance. We allow customers to focus on their core business, not IT management.
