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Company Success Stories - VistaPrint
VistaPrint™ Relies on the AMD Opteron™ Processor to Cost-Effectively Support Massive Growth and Introduce New Services to Customers
Profile
VistaPrint
"The cost/performance and performance-per-watt benefits of the AMD Opteron™ processor helped us realize massive cost savings: in addition to not having to build a new data center, we are seeing a marked reduction in power and cooling bills. We are also able to more easily and affordably scale to meet our customers’ needs. AMD’s innovations have brought such terrific value to VistaPrint™ that I am eagerly anticipating the company’s upcoming quad-core options."
Challenge:
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VistaPrint™ (Nasdaq: VPRT), a leading online supplier of high-quality graphic design services and customized printed products to small businesses and consumers, was experiencing massive growth (for fiscal year 2006, total company revenue was $152.1 million, an increase of 67 percent as compared to total revenue of $90.9 million for fiscal year 2005). Eventually the company’s infrastructure for 17 web sites (all localized for language and currency) would not be able to scale to meet ongoing customer demand, which stood at an average of over 18,000 orders per day.
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VistaPrint also wanted to roll out new services and features like photo desk calendars, sticky notes and self-inking pocket stamps to customers, but current data center conditions could only support current usage. The company believed its only option was to dramatically increase its data center co-location costs.
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The company was also planning to migrate to an x86, 64-bit architecture at some point in the future, so VistaPrint Director of IT Operations Brian McCarthy searched for a solution that could support both 32- and 64-bit computing simultaneously.
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Additionally, VistaPrint’s developer team was beginning to experience delays in application creation due to the slow performance of the older systems they were using.
Solution:
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VistaPrint migrated and consolidated its web farm to AMD Opteron™ processor-based HP ProLiant® DL585 servers running VMware® virtualization infrastructure software.
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VistaPrint’s developer team switched all developers to AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core processor-powered HP dx5150 Microtower desktops.
Impact:
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The AMD Opteron processor provided critical scalability, which helped the company meet ongoing increased business and support new services on an as-needed basis.
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The AMD Opteron processor also helped relieve VistaPrint of its growing cost concerns. The efficiencies offered by the AMD Opteron processor helped cut rack space usage by approximately 50 percent, while supporting a 76 percent growth in company revenue, which eliminated the need to expand the data center. The efficiencies also helped reduce the company’s power consumption and cooling requirements.
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Additionally, the 32-bit backwards compatibility of the AMD Opteron processor will help VistaPrint more easily migrate to a 64-bit architecture once the company is prepared to do so.
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Lastly, the performance of the AMD Athlon processor-based HP desktops helped the developer team to more rapidly build and deliver new features for customers.
Organizational Profile
VistaPrint™ Limited (Nasdaq:VPRT) is a leading online supplier of high-quality graphic design services and customized printed products to small businesses and consumers. VistaPrint offers custom designed, full-color, low-cost printed products even in small quantities. Over eight million small businesses and consumers have already chosen VistaPrint for products ranging from business cards and brochures to invitations and thank you cards. Products are printed at VistaPrint’s two state-of-the-art plants in North America and Europe that total over 200,000 square feet of production space. A global company, VistaPrint employs more than 700 people and operates 17 localized web sites serving over 120 countries around the world. A broad range of design options are available online at www.VistaPrint.com. VistaPrint’s printed products are satisfaction guaranteed.
Challenge
VistaPrint offers customers a unique value proposition in that its systems can produce high-quality graphically-based products at a low cost. The company has served more than eight million customers from its 17 web sites and acquired 687,000 first-time customers in Q2 FY 07. As such, the company was experiencing exceptional success in terms of growth: for fiscal year 2006, total company revenue was $152.1 million, an increase of 67 percent as compared to total revenue of $90.9 million for fiscal year 2005. Revenue for Q2 FY 07 was $64.0 million, an increase of 76 percent when compared to revenue of $36.4 million in the same quarter of fiscal 2006.
In addition to supporting this ongoing growth, VistaPrint desired to retain another competitive edge by offering new products such as photo desk calendars, sticky notes and self-inking pocket stamps. However, its current infrastructure, although performing well to date, would soon be unable to handle the demand for increased volume and new products.
The company’s web farm (which completes all the rendering of online orders for items like brochures and business cards) was based in Bermuda, where real estate is costly and space is precious. As the data center was running on a blade system based on a competing processor, Brian McCarthy, director of IT operations at VistaPrint, knew the infrastructure would be unable to meet future expectations: “Our blade system was difficult to scale due to its high power requirements and I could see in the near future the processing power would not be able to keep pace with the company’s growth, both in terms of usage and new services,” he said.
Additionally, VistaPrint’s developer team was experiencing delays in creating new applications due to the older system on which the team relied. The company desired to migrate to a more powerful processor in order to more rapidly develop in-demand features and applications such as calendars for VistaPrint’s customers.
Solution
From his earlier experience with another company, McCarthy believed that the AMD Opteron processor was well suited to meet his needs. After the company ran benchmark testing, VistaPrint decided to migrate its web farm to AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant® DL585 servers running VMware® virtualization infrastructure software.
Additionally, VistaPrint’s developer team switched all developers to AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core processor-powered HP dx5150 Microtower desktops.
Impact
The new AMD Opteron processor-based web farm alleviated VistaPrint’s concerns, ranging from scalability to performance to energy efficiencies. “The cost/performance and performance-per-watt benefits of the AMD Opteron processor helped us realize massive cost savings: in addition to not having to build a new data center, we are seeing a marked reduction in power and cooling bills,” said McCarthy. “We are also able to more easily and affordably scale to meet our customers’ needs. AMD’s innovations have brought such terrific value to VistaPrint that we are eagerly anticipating the company’s upcoming quad-core options.”
According to McCarthy, the scalability benefits of the AMD Opteron processor surpassed the company’s expectations. He said that the company experienced a dramatic increase in uploads in one week and the system held steady. “Not only were we able to support this increase in business but we could also ‘work on our feet’—easily moving in new servers to meet demand, without heavily taxing our IT staff,” said McCarthy.
The company was also able to cancel plans for expanding data center space due to the AMD Opteron processor’s efficiencies. VistaPrint was able to consolidate the blade servers in its web farm to AMD Opteron processor-based HP ProLiant DL585 servers, yielding precious new space for its data center. According to McCarthy, the company was able to cut rack space usage by approximately 50 percent and still accomplish the same tasks, which helped save space but also dramatically reduced the company’s power and cooling bills.
The developer team has also reaped the benefits of AMD innovations. According to McCarthy, the high memory utilization afforded by the AMD Athlon processor is bringing new levels of speed and efficiency to VistaPrint’s developer team, allowing the individuals to spend more time writing code rather than waiting for long delays in programming procedures such as testing and debugging. This increase in performance has helped the company introduce new products for its customers, and as such, help VistaPrint remain a competitive force in the online printing industry.
“The cost/performance and performance-per-watt benefits of the AMD Opteron processor helped us realize massive cost savings: in addition to not having to build a new data center, we are seeing a marked reduction in power and cooling bills. We are also able to more easily and affordably scale to meet our customers’ needs. AMD’s innovations have brought such terrific value to VistaPrint that I am eagerly anticipating the company’s upcoming quad-core options.”—Brian McCarthy, director of IT operations, VistaPrint
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets. AMD is dedicated to driving open innovation, choice and industry growth by delivering superior customer-centric solutions that empower consumers and businesses worldwide. For more information, visit www.amd.com.
© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners. |
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