Wayfair launches new hybrid cloud strategy – without AWS

Wayfair is looking to better scale its operations by moving to the cloud.

The digitally native home furnishings giant is using Google Cloud as the foundation to support its migration to a hybrid cloud strategy. Wayfair debuted its hybrid cloud strategy in April 2019 to support the retailer’s 36-hour annual “Way Day” online sales event. 

Partnering with Google Cloud, the retailer was able to handle the burst capacity needed to successfully run Way Day, which featured spikes of more than 300% in revenue, orders and unique customers than the previous 28 days averaged.

Wayfair now uses several different Google Cloud solutions, including compute, storage, and networking, data and analytics, and G Suite productivity tools, to support tasks including managing the availability, latency, performance and capacity of the company's systems during peak periods such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The retailer also leverages Google Cloud to augment its in-house data analytics operations, Wayfair analysts can continue to identify trends and patterns at a large scale, while making real-time decisions in areas such as merchandising, personalized customer experiences, and marketing and promotion campaigns.

In addition, employees are using G Suite, including Gmail, docs, calendar and meet functions, to instantly connect with co-workers, collaborate, and improve information-sharing across the organization. 

"As an e-commerce leader, Wayfair has always been committed to improving the shopping experience with cutting-edge technologies, and that's why we partnered with an innovator in the retail technology space like Google Cloud," said Steve Crusenberry, VP, infrastructure and platform engineering, Wayfair. "Google won us over with the speed, reliability and performance of their technology, but more importantly, their team's willingness to work side-by-side with us at every level to solve our trickiest scaling challenges."

It is interesting to note that Wayfair did not select Amazon Web Services (AWS), considering that parent company Amazon is the home furnishings retailer’s number one competitor. While Google Cloud is also a leading cloud platform provider with a strong track record in retail, competitive issues may have played in a role in its cloud computing decisions.