Redundancy – the backbone of eCommerce?

We were just as confused when SLI-Systems’ Marcus Law told us that ‘redundancy’ can mean the difference between success and failure. Yet in the high tech sector it has slightly different connotations…

Redundancy is a term used across the high tech sector, especially in ‘software as a service’ or SaaS, where the service is based in ‘the cloud’. SaaS is a growing sector for one simple reason: it’s a rapid means of improving site operation and data analysis, and it enables smaller brands to compete in an ever changing digital environment.

It usually involves a simple, subscription-based pricing model that covers everything required to operate a service, including support and maintenance. It may be a straightforward model but what it offers customers is far from simple.

Software as a service means a lower and consistent level of operational expenditure for the client, without any investment needed for on-premises hardware and software licenses. It’s not just about fast deployment speeds and low upfront costs, it’s also about ongoing flexibility. That means allowing clients to scale up or down as needs change, enabling them to respond rapidly to changes in the market.

SaaS only works, of course, when it can assure its client of high availability and scalability. That’s where redundancy comes in: as a multi-level redundant infrastructure it means that we can ensure availability and scalability.

What redundancy means here is a method of ensuring no downtime, of ensuring the service works no matter what disaster strikes. That can be something as simple as a fuse blowing out a power source, hardware or software failures, a traffic spike on the back of a promotion that sends the servers into meltdown.

These days it could even be earthquakes, hurricanes, fires or floods. When any of these things happen, redundancy becomes a competitive advantage. SaaS companies with redundant data centres are hosting client sites, customer data, product databases or whatever is needed on multiple servers in multiple locations.

Each of these mirrors the other so that any of them can keep the service going if there’s a problem with the others. This redundancy allows the SaaS company to keep its customers’ sites running when there’s a problem.

Downtime is the one thing that no one wants in eCommerce and mCommerce. If the site or service goes down, it means lost revenue and worse, it might mean the loss of a customer. Online customers are not known for their loyalty if the service is poor! Even a few minutes of downtime could mean the loss of dozens of customers.

SLI, for example, has a global infrastructure across eight data centres in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The redundancies in the system protect customers’ search and navigation, so that in the event that a server or data centre fails, the load is automatically redirected to another location.

That means retailers can be sure that their site search service is going to have the greatest degree of reliability, performance and security. The system can process millions of queries and serve up the most relevant search results for its customers via multiple, redundant servers.

That means whatever else happens to an eCommerce site, its search is going to be keeping customers happy and smoothing performance. During peak time one SLI client sustains one hundred thousand queries per minute, which SLI’s infrastructure swallows up with ease.

Redundancy means that client search functionality will operate without a hitch, regardless of where in the system, or why, a failure might occur. It is during moments like these, when uninterrupted service can be delivered to customers with no hesitation, that you start to realise that redundancy really is the backbone of eCommerce.