1. Funkypigeon.com
Our AWS Journey
Ian Page

2. Ian Page
Network and
Infrastructure
Manager

3. Funkypigeon – A potted history
• Established in April 2009
• Purchased by a major high street
retailer in 2010
• We have achieved national
recognition of the brand which is in
the top three of the most
remembered adverts - You’ve all
seen the TV ads

4. A bit of background
• Peaks and Troughs
– FP business is very peaky – Valentine’s Day, Mothers Day,
Fathers Day, Christmas, TV Advertising, etc.
• Previous solution overview
– Traditional Hosted solution using physical hardware

5. So why did we need to change?
• Redundant Capacity (High cost)
• Lack of elasticity (Inability to scale on demand)
• Lack of centralised content/controls (Manual
deployment processes)
• Limited testing environment (Difficulty
conducting comparable tests)
• Security and PCI Compliance

6. What were our requirements?
• Had to be a quick project due to trading peaks (3 months
or less)
• Had to be a simple lift and shift migration
• Had to be able to scale to meet demand
• Chosen solution had be resilient
• Had to have the appropriate tools for monitoring the
services and the spend
• Had to be a more or less seamless transition

7. How did we decide upon AWS and CloudReach?
• Scalable infrastructure to cater for trading peaks
• Resilient solution
• Flexibility
• Service and support wrapper inclusive of
monitoring
• Expertise and on-demand assistance
• Cost

8. What were the results and benefits?
• Secure, scalable solution
• Resilience
• Testing and staging environments
• Ongoing cost benefits
• Far superior support and monitoring both
technically and commercially

9. Comparison

10. So, what’s next?
• Review of current storage with a view to move to
cheaper S3 storage
• Scaling mobile application services
• CloudFront for static content
• Continued advances in new products
– Mobile Covers and Cases
– Large Posters
– Multi photo upload Calendars

11. Thank you