shopify boosts the user experience at over 40,000 online stores worldwide with cdnetworks
DESCRIPTION
“With CDNetworks local points of presence, our Australia‐based merchants get the same performance as in North America. Neither Shopify nor our customers have to invest in datacenters or co‐hosting.” ‐ Dale Neufeld, Director of Technical Operations, ShopifyTRANSCRIPT
CDNetworks | 1 2013‐03
CASE STUDY
At a Glance
COMPANY: Shopify
FOUNDED: 2006
HEADQUARTERS: Ottawa, Canada
INDUSTRY: Retail & Software‐as‐a‐Service
WEBSITE: www.shopify.com
SERVICES: Provide comprehensive
ecommerce websites for small businesses
to successfully sell their products online
CDNetworks SERVICES:
Content Acceleration
Key Results
Streamlined page load times for more than 22 million products
Optimized online stores performance globally, including those in Australia
and New Zealand
Leveraged CDN capabilities to attract prospective customers
Realized 100% uptime of their CDN infrastructure
Shopify Boosts the User Experience at Over 40,000 Online
Stores Worldwide with CDNetworks
____
“With CDNetworks local points of presence, our Australia‐based merchants get the same performance as in North America. Neither Shopify nor our customers have to invest in datacenters or co‐hosting.”
‐ Dale Neufeld, Director of Technical Operations, Shopify
__ __________
Can small businesses compete online to sell products against the online mega‐stores?
Today they can, thanks to the turnkey ecommerce website platform provided by
Shopify (www.shopify.com). In just seven years, Shopify’s innovative Software‐as‐a‐
Service (SaaS) platform has helped more than 40 thousand small businesses sell over
22 million products to online consumers around the world.
Today, Shopify powers online retail sites including small business such as Github and
The Chive to big ticket businesses including Tesla Motors and General Electric. Shopify
credits its success to a laser focus on helping emerging businesses grow into successful
companies. Shopify achieves this by creating great technology and making it affordable.
The company delivers the technology through its SaaS platform, which removes the
hassle of running online store infrastructure, so online merchants can focus on what
they do best ― building and selling their products.
The Challenge
As Shopify’s customer base of online merchants grew across the globe, the company
recognized the need to ensure the best website user experience possible for shoppers
in a multitude of different countries. This led Shopify to underpin its website content
delivery capabilities with the service of a content delivery network (CDN).
Unfortunately, the CDN service provider lacked a cloud delivery presence in Australia, a
fast‐growing market for Shopify. To accommodate the needs of Australia‐based
merchants and their end users located in Australia and New Zealand, Shopify searched
for a way to ensure op mal website performance in both countries ― without
incurring massive infrastructure build‐out costs; the cost to expand data center
capabilities in the region was prohibitively expensive.
At the same time, website traffic was growing for Shopify in the US and Europe. To
continue its differentiated capability of delivering high‐performing websites, Shopify
network engineers sought an affordable solution that could ensure fast website
delivery anywhere in the world.
Key Objectives
To achieve optimal website performance for all its global clients with one solution,
Shopify sought a CDN service provider with infrastructure in Australia and the rest of the
world where Shopify merchants operate. “We needed a single solution to address the
existing large volume of site traffic in the US, Canada, and Europe while at the same
time allowing for global growth, particularly in Australia,” says Dale Neufeld, Director of
Technical Operations at Shopify.
CDNetworks | 2 2013‐03
Shopify also needed to ensure that pricing would remain stable, even if its platform
usage grew internationally. “This meant finding a service provider that wouldn’t jack up
prices just because our international traffic started to grow.”
The Solution: A CDN Built for Global Operations
After evaluating the capabilities and pricing of several CDNs, Shopify selected
CDNetworks to enable its SaaS platform around the globe. “We chose CDNetworks,
because they had the people and infrastructure in all the countries we needed,”
explains Neufeld. “Moreover, they were able to provide evidence of superior site
performance in our core and growing markets.”
100 Percent Uptime
Since adopting CDNetworks, Shopify merchants have enjoyed 100 percent uptime of
their content delivery network service. Not only does this optimize the end‐user
experience on their websites, it also helps Shopify grow its business. “We can attract
those customers who want to focus on their business, not on the IT needed to run and
optimize their website,” says Neufeld. In fact, as Figure 1 below illustrates, Shopify has
found that current and prospective merchants value Shopify’s CDN capabilities so much
that the company incorporates a description of CDNetworks in its website marketing.
Figure 1. Shopify Differentiates its Services by Marketing CDN Capabilities
Differentiating via CDN Capabilities
Today, Shopify’s SaaS platform continues to lead the global ecommerce market among
small and emerging businesses. In fact, nearly 30 percent of Shopify’s merchants
operate in markets outside of North America. According to Neufeld, Shopify welcomes
its growing popularity around the world. “With CDNetworks local points of presence,
our Australia‐based merchants get the same performance as in North America. Neither
Shopify nor our customers have to invest in datacenters or co‐hosting,” says Neufeld.
“We're able to focus on core infrastructure improvements because we know the
content (static assets) is being delivered without a hitch.”
“CDNetworks has helped us achieve
our goal of successfully entering
emerging markets with our flagship
platform applications.”
Dale Neufeld, Director of Technical
Operations, Shopify
CDNetworks | 3 2013‐03
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Features and specifications
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About Shopify
Shopify is an ecommerce platform that allows individuals and businesses to create
awesome online stores. Shopify currently hosts over 40,000 active online retailers,
including: Amnesty International, General Electric, Tesla Motors, LMFAO, Foo Fighters,
Encyclopedia Britannica, Tata Group, Evisu Jeans, DODOcase, Penny Arcade, CrossFit,
GitHub, Evernote, and Epic Meal Time. Shopify was founded in 2006 by three
snowboarding enthusiasts who wanted to create a better way to sell their snowboards
online. Shopify has received $22 million in Series A and B funding from Bessemer
Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Felicis Ventures, and Georgian Partners. For more
information, please visit http://www.shopify.com.
About CDNetworks
CDNetworks enables Global Cloud Acceleration. Our mission is to transform the
Internet into a secure, reliable, scalable and high performing Application Delivery
Network. CDNetworks’ unique position as the only multinational CDN with expertise
and infrastructure in China, Russia and other emerging markets, enables us to be
trusted partners in local markets, while serving as foremost experts on extending into
global markets. Accelerating more than 17,500 global websites and cloud services over
our 140 PoPs, CDNetworks serves our e‐business customers across industries like
finance, travel, eCommerce, learning management, high tech, manufacturing and
media. CDNetworks has been serving our enterprise customers for more than 13 years,
and has offices in the U.S., Korea, China, Japan, and the UK. For more information,
please visit: http://www.cdnetworks.com.