vidaXL Fuels Growth With Modern Infrastructure And Data Capabilities

vidaXL realise the value in using data to gain business insights and in turn, make the right decisions. However, to ensure these business ambitions were met, their current IT infrastructure would need to be modernised. Read on to find out how.

The Business

vidaXL is one of the fastest-growing online retailers in the world, operating in 29 markets including North America, Australia and Europe. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in the Netherlands, they now employ more than 1,600 people in offices and warehouses around the world.

The Challenge

The on-premise and private cloud IT infrastructure of vidaXL was hindering its growth ambitions. With SAP at the centre of the vidaXL operation, the business needed to scale faster and move with new market opportunities, while maintaining world-class performance and high availability.

The Solution

Both Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) were initially considered, however Google’s ethos around open-source appealed significantly, as vidaXL could run leading open-source products in a battle-tested serverless environment, fully managed by Google. Qodea was brought in due to its expansive knowledge of all things Google and to alleviate any obstacles that arose along the way.

Google and Qodea offered vidaXL a springboard for its ambitions with data. With all the storage possibilities; the speed of GCP and power of BigQuery, they could immediately make progress. After migrating several business applications to GCP, vidaXL decided to bring their SAP EWM and ECC to Google Cloud as well.

Migration to the cloud, coordination between business and IT

Creating a game plan, with a clear bridge between IT Infrastructure and vidaXL’s business model.

vidaXL realised that a specialised partner could accelerate their transition and help them to gain the most value from Google Cloud. They looked for a partner who offered both professional and ongoing managed services, allowing them to focus fully on growing their business.

Ted van Dongen, CIO at vidaXL, explained “We soon noticed Qodea were a dedicated and certified Google Premier partner. They have a mountain of expertise and experience we were looking for. The introductory meeting was enough to convince us. We saw that as a business partner they think along with our development and ambitions and have a can-do mentality. Qodea was and is clearly the right partner to realise our vision.”

SAP on Google Cloud

Elevating growth through SAP upgrades, a flexible way of working

In order to support the further growth of vidaXL, a migration from SAP to S4/HANA was necessary. Previously, vidaXL’s SAP workloads were deployed on-premise, however it was established that vidaXL needed at least 50% more capacity. A cloud solution was an obvious choice to enable this scalability.

Qodea built a fully automated SAP platform, allowing vidaXL to benefit from the on-demand nature of Google Cloud. They immediately achieved the growth they were looking for and remained flexible to expand again – or downsize, depending on changing market dynamics.

Modernising business units

Qodea is also working with vidaXL to modernise its internal business units and processes. Modern infrastructure, software and data engineering is at the core of this partnership. The teams are working in collaboration on everything from infrastructure as code & Kubernetes to a GitOps CI / CD approach.

Ted van Dongen reflects that “This means that vidaXL can benefit from the potential of Google Cloud in the most cost-effective way. The cooperation with Qodea enables us to realise our business ambitions in the short and long term.”

Success assured with managed services

Qodea’s managed services offering also allows vidaXL to continually maximise their investment in Google Cloud. In addition, the partnership allows the internal vidaXL team to focus on adding value to the business and driving their own growth, while Qodea provides the underlying infrastructure and GCP services to match this ambition.

Van Dongen concludes that “We have practically no worries about our infrastructure; we can confidently leave that to the experts at Qodea. That way we can fully concentrate on what is really important to us: growth. Together we form a powerful team.”