With a very complex IT environment supporting many brands and types of data, and the company growing rapidly through acquisition, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC. needed to improve data access and availability for its mission-critical customer-facing, Web, financial, inventory, fulfillment and analytical applications. To accomplish this, the company consolidated its IT footprint and implemented new data storage technologies, creating a reliable 70-terabyte infrastructure that speeds and streamlines business operations.

This infrastructure supports the company’s process for handling seasonal peaks in customer orders, which multiply online traffic 10 to 12 times. Rather than investing in extensive vertical scaling capabilities to accommodate peak loads on a single Web site, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM utilizes three regional data centers, each supporting two Web sites, all seamlessly connected to the company’s main URL. It is a first-of-a-kind, horizontal scaling solution for the problem of commercial Web sites that slow down or crash due to peak loads.