Krispy Kreme
Case Study
Company:
Krispy KremeCore Competency:
Leading branded retailer and wholesaler of high-quality doughnuts.Challenge:
The need for a hosting provider that can handle scalability and provide maximum uptime.Service Solutions:
Hosted Solutions’ Hi-TouchTM Dedicated Servers, Storage Services, Monitoring, Disaster Recovery, and Security Services.The Company:
Founded in 1937, out of Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Krispy Kreme is a leading branded retailer and wholesaler of high-quality doughnuts, including its signature Hot Original Glazed.
Vernon Rudolph bought a secret yeast-raised doughnut recipe from a French chef from New Orleans, rented a building in Winston-Salem to bake in, and began selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts to the local grocery stores.
Krispy Kreme has continued its growth and expanded the design of the consistent Krispy Kreme store throughout the Southeast. They now have approximately 300 Krispy Kreme factory stores and 90 satellites, and are continuing their growth strongly. The rapid expansion created challenges in making sure products were always fresh and available. With this continued growth, Nathan Mucher, Vice-President of Information Services realized that an expanded web presence would aid, and be a keystone in their growth initiatives.
Media Center
Data Center Locations
The Business Challenge:
Krispy Kreme’s web presence is integral to the company’s daily operations including employee resources, franchisee and media relations, product sales, and fundraising. Krispy Kreme was also beginning to realize the a new revenue stream from their collectible memorabilia. The Krispy Kreme name and logo was quickly gaining traction, and they wanted to capitalize on their nostalgic reverberations.
Krispy Kreme was in need of a provider that could provide the stability, level of service, and security requirements to support the deployment of their web applications. With this challenge came the need for a provider who’s network would allow for burstability, scalability, and the capability to handle their peak activity and overall expansion as Krispy Kreme’s brand continued to grow. Krispy Kreme’s website is a key focal point for their collectible memorabilia purchases as well as information regarding their franchises, fundraising, and delicious products offered. By providing access to this wealth of information, Krispy Kreme needed a provider that could handle the scalability and the volume of data being stored and run through the website.
Krispy Kreme was also beginning to experience rapid international growth. This growth made their website and access to mission critical data even more important as the site would be a vital source for possible investor information and a powerful branding medium. This further justified the need for a strong web presence, and to seek a managed hosting provider that could fill in the holes. Specifically a local hosting provider that could provide a world class facility, the network applications, and the expansion of data servers needed to fulfill the demand of the ever growing company.
The Solution:
After evaluating a number of data center providers, Krispy Kreme concluded that Hosted Solutions would be the best partner to meet their requirements. Mucher quotes, "What impresses me the most about Hosted Solutions is their team’s personal dedication to ensuring that we receive the right technical solutions for our needs."
Hosted Solutions operates four SAS 70 Type II certified data centers located in Charlotte, Cary, and Raleigh, North Carolina and Boston, Massachusetts providing best-of-breed data center operations with hardened physical infrastructure, the highest level of security, and a complete managed services portfolio.
Initially Krispy Kreme provided all of their own server hardware, while Hosted Solutions provided them with colocation, network services, disaster recovery, managed storage, and managed firewall services. Hosted Solutions Charlotte data center facility satisfied Krispy Kreme’s desire for a local partner, but it was the facility that rose Hosted Solutions to the top.
Krispy Kreme knew coming in the value of fully redundant electrical systems, HVAC infrastructure, and multi-provider network access deployed in a best practice 2n+1 configuration to maximize redundancies as it pertained to their infrastructure. It was an unseen benefit that surfaced in collaboration that quickly impressed Krispy Kreme. Hosted Solutions recognized that Krispy Kreme should contemplate new equipment in order to optimize functionality. By allowing Hosted Solutions to barter the agreement, Krispy Kreme would benefit from lower costs by not having to incur the large capital costs associated with the purchase of IT hardware. Krispy Kreme would also drastically cut down installation time by outsourcing construction to Hosted Solutions expert project teams and utilizing their software licensing agreements. "The speed to market allowed us to realize a few more months of revenue, while the savings we gained from Hosted Solutions allowed us the ability to better utilize or sometimes mitigate the need to add additional resources that we may need to support our expansion," said Mucher.
Hosted Solutions offered Krispy Kreme a combination of managed hosting services, network, and bandwidth services, and their Hi-Touch backup and monitoring services housed in their enterprise class Charlotte data center. The solution was fully scalable allowing for the website’s seasonal fluctuations, secure, and in the hands of Hosted Solutions experts 24x7. "Hosted Solutions’ high touch approach to managed services made them a clear fit for Krispy Kreme," adds Mucher.
Hosted Solutions has added security services for Krispy Kreme’s site since the initial agreement. With the ability to purchase merchandise, gift cards, and sign up for various fundraising events, the site had to be protected against theft and fraud. Hosted Solutions has aided Krispy Kreme with adding firewalls and other managed security services to the site as a precaution. Kittie Pearson, Interactive Systems Manager for Krispy Kreme replies, "Krispy Kreme simply couldn’t have asked for a better web hosting partner."