For weeks, I have been anticipating Target’s launch of Italian luxury knitwear designer, Missoni. I covet Missioni’s luxurious, iconic designs and have been checking Target’s website daily to get a sneak peak of the line including clothing, house wares and shoes! (Flashback to last year’s Liberty of London launch when I coerced unsuspecting Target employees to give me access to the collection before it was put on the shelves.) But I digress.
Turns out, I am not the only one obsessed. Yesterday, Target’s website crashed several times throughout the day as frenzied shoppers inundated the site trying to get their piece of the designer pie. According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, performance problems can account for an average of $117M of revenue lost annually. I wonder how much Target lost yesterday? Not to mention how many frustrated fashionistas were created.
But the real question is, what was missing from their IT Infrastructure solution? The Cloud. The cloud enables enterprises to quickly turn up more capacity during events that create bursts of demand, giving you built-in failover insurance. As an example, many retailers leverage a public cloud solution during the busy holiday buying season. So if your website could possibly take a hit like this, you may want to consider your options with public cloud.
