Decathlon, the global sports retailer, will benefit from a global cloud platform for digital services offered by Colt Technology Services, Equinix, Interxion (a division of digital real estate), AWS, Google Cloud and Axians.
Colt provides connectivity to regional Decathlon nodes in Asia, Europe, and the United States in the form of a high-bandwidth backbone connecting multiple public clouds and SaaS services. Equinix and Interxion/DLR are data center partners that provide co-location environments, AWS and Google Cloud are cloud partners, and Axians provide remote management and support
central network solution
For the required transition to cloud-based services, Decathlon needed a centralized network solution that meets the highest availability requirements and can support its digital strategy and global expansion. The retailer needed a faster way to deploy the best digital products to scale their business. Decathlon also wanted to reduce the costs and overheads associated with managing its in-house data centers.
Decathlon now has the ability to set up an on-demand network connection for use in minutes instead of weeks or months. This should result in high quality communication in the form of dedicated connections backed by Service Level Agreements. Decathlon also benefits from a high availability rate of 99.99%, improved performance by bringing users closer to cloud service providers, and optimal scalability thanks to the ability to upgrade connections in less than 24 hours.
Support for cloud applications
“This gives Decathlon a secure, resilient and integrated platform to support our cloud applications. This allows us to focus on automating network scalability. Our goal is to build a predictive network based on the needs of our end users,” said Matthias Castelen, Head of Network at Decathlon.
According to Castelain, new skills in NetOps and network data analysis are needed to achieve this goal. “Colt’s On-Demand Network Services provide us with a central location to request and deploy network connectivity. We are now less dependent on our internal IT infrastructure. By using Equinix’s advanced data center facilities, we can also reduce costs and complexity.”
Decathlon digital transformation
Over the past decade, Decathlon has initiated a rapid digital transformation of the organization through its Decathlon Technology division in response to new technology issues and consumption patterns. Decathlon Technology has more than 3,000 technicians in more than 50 countries and uses highly innovative technology. Develops tools, systems, and experiences that help people around the world access the fun and health benefits associated with exercise.
As an organization in the sports sector, Decathlon engages in two activities: developing technical products and providing innovative services on the one hand, and selling these products and services through physical stores and online stores on the other. With 330 points of sale in France and more than 1,700 points of sale worldwide, Decathlon and 97,000 employees have been working since 1976 to realize the ambition to take the sport even further through innovation.
