The Business Need: The US social networking site wanted to establish a co-location centre in Ireland as part of its strategy to target the European market. Giving itself less than a month to build-out a server farm, it needed a local supplier that was reliable, competitive and supportive.
The Solution: Ergo delivered a bank of HP servers and other equipment, helping achieve the critical time frame. Now embarked on the second phase of deployment, Ergo is a trusted partner for Piczo as it pursues its strategic goals.
The Benefits: Supplying the hardware and on-the-ground expertise, Ergo has enabled Piczo to establish a co-location foothold in Ireland as it prepares for a major phase of European growth.
The Customer Verdict: "When you get a problem you have you to be able to turn to the vendor for help. That has always been there with Ergo. It’s been a real pleasant experience not to have to worry about something. It was nice to have not only the support for the system but also from their people on the ground when it came to more general issues about operating in a new market."
The Business Need
Headquartered in San Francisco, Piczo is ranked within the top five teen web sites in the world with 65-70 per cent of users coming from Europe. This prompted the social networking firm to invest in a co-location facility in Ireland. "We wanted to have a speedy, performance-based site and you can’t deliver that to Europe from the West Coast," said Sandy Khaund, Sr. Vice President of Technology. "It’s too slow requiring too many lines."
The company decided to locate in Ireland at the Interxion data centre in Dublin.
"Having made the decision, the challenge we presented ourselves with was to roll something out in less than a month," he said.
An HP house in the US, the company consulted its account manager for a list of Irish channel partners that could supply the hardware for the build. A shortlist was drawn up and initial contact was made through web sites. Ergo quickly differentiated itself from the pack.
"From the moment we visited the site to the first phone calls, Ergo had a different look and feel. And when we started asking them questions we got an immediate response. That was the only kind of relationship we could have if we were going to build-out a whole data centre in such a short time frame," said Khaund.
The Solution
In the first phase of its deployment Ergo was asked to supply hardware that would emulate and improve on the server farms Piczo had already established in the States. The state-of the-art equipment had to be designed for large cluster, high performance computing environments.
An initial investment of $250,000 went on 30 high end HP Proliant servers, as well as Cisco routers, switches, hubs and cabling. Piczo’s own people handled the deployment with the Ergo team on hand to supply consultancy services.
"It took three weeks from Piczo’s first contact with us to switching it on and going live," said Frazer Furlong, IT Infrastructure Sales Manager at Ergo. "The timeline was critical because it all had to be up and running before the kids went back to school which is the busiest period for social networking sites."
In phase two, Ergo has been procured to deliver another forty servers as Piczo plans for rapid European growth as it expects to close the gap on competitors like MySpace and Bebo. "Part of our remit has been to build a server farm that is easy to scale as traffic increases," said Furlong. "We expect to be working with Piczo well into the future, helping with its growth strategy."
The Benefits
Piczo now has a virtual presence in Ireland that is a vital stepping stone for its plans to expand its European business.
"It started purely as viral growth, firstly in the UK and then across the rest of Europe. Germany is now one of our biggest markets," said Parker. "With the co-location strategy we wanted to optimise our connectivity to Europe and set it up as quickly as possible. With the help of Ergo we have been able to do it."
He has nothing but praise for his Irish supplier. "When you get a problem you have you to be able to turn to the vendor for help. That has been there with Ergo. It’s been a real pleasant experience not to have to worry about something," he said. "It was nice to have not only the support for the system but also from their people on the ground when it came to more general issues about operating in a new market."