Dell helps Skyscanner go full throttle

Skyscanner, the world’s fastest growing travel-search site, has worked with Dell to architect and build new converged data centres in the UK and Singapore and has plans in the works to deploy in Hong Kong in January 2014.

With an 84 per cent increase in traffic and more than 25 million mobile app downloads last year, Skyscanner sought an IT partner to support its ambitious global growth. Skyscanner has moved away from hosted IT resources and has built its own data centres in Europe and Asia to support its customers around the world.

Skyscanner selected Dell following a review of the market. A proof of concept was completed with a converged blade solution, which combined Dell EqualLogic Blade Arrays, Dell PowerEdge blade servers, Dell Networking MXL blade switching and blade chassis management software in a compact, shared footprint that reduced the need for excessive licenses, space, cable configuration, and power and cooling costs. Skyscanner also opted for transparent support through the Dell ProSupport Mission Critical four-hour response service, which offers a local single point of contact that is quickly able to address IT issues.

Following the test phase, Dell’s end-to-end, scalable solutions were put into place at Skyscanner’s new data centre sites. Each site was equipped with multiple Dell Converged Blade Data Center solutions, which combine Dell EqualLogic blade arrays, servers, switching and management to provide an entire data centre within a single blade enclosure and helping to streamline IT management and operations. Skyscanner deployed EqualLogic hybrid SSD arrays, which auto-tier hot application data to provide optimal performance for Skyscanner’s priority workloads.

This robust environment has been designed to provide Skyscanner with an undisrupted, top quality service to its customers. Dell EqualLogic’s all-inclusive licensing model will mean that Skyscanner has the potential to reduce its IT infrastructure costs, by up to one-third over a three-year period.

To ensure that the data centres remain efficient at all times and that business growth can be supported through IT resources, Skyscanner worked closely with Dell IT Advisory Services throughout the implementation process. This relationship will continue now that the infrastructure is installed to ensure that Skyscanner benefits from performance reporting and analytics, which offer insight into how existing resources can be optimised. If additional compute or capacity resources are needed in the future, the standardised and scalable converged Dell environment means that changes can be made quickly, and are easily replicable across each datacentre site.

“Web-based services across the world are experiencing great market opportunities as consumers and businesses increasingly spend online,” said Aisling Keegan, General Manager and Executive Director for Preferred Accounts, Dell UK. “As these organisations grow and become more successful, the challenge of providing a consistently high quality of service becomes crucial to long-term success. Dell’s converged end-to-end solutions and services provide the scalability, flexibility and performance required to help organisations deploy powerful data centre environments to support heavy demand and accommodate rapid business growth.”