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Rackspace is providing managed hosting services to Dreams, a leading bed retailer. According to Dreams, Rackspace services helped boost online sales over Easter by 35 per cent compared to last year.

As the UK's leading bed specialist, Dreams is committed to providing the highest standard of expert customer service and advice, and offers an extensive selection of high quality products including mattresses, bed frames, divans, bedroom furniture and soft furnishings, many of which are hand-crafted in the UK at the Dreams Bed Factory. Founded in 1985, and owned by Sun European Partners since March 2013, Dreams has more than 160 retail stores and a transactional website at www.dreams.co.uk. Its head office - known as 'Bedquarters' - is located in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

The company's website was launched in 2011 and has since evolved to offer new features and handle the increasing volume of incoming traffic. To meet the growing demands of online shoppers it needed a reliable eCommerce solution in place, so it implemented a Magento platform which is supported by Rackspace managed cloud.

This solution was set up after Dreams had consulted its Magento specialist partner Session Digital and decided that Rackspace was the managed cloud vendor that could provide the most effective infrastructure for its systems. The Dedicated Server Solution combines the performance of dedicated servers with the scalability of cloud, including a 100% Network Uptime Guarantee even during peak times like January sales and Bank Holiday weekends when the site experiences huge traffic spikes.

Richard Voyce, Head of eCommerce, Dreams says: "When I started in this role 18 months ago, my first challenge was to update our eCommerce offering as it was struggling to cope with the traffic that was being attracted to the site by big marketing campaigns across national TV and other media. Turning to the high performance and reliability of the Rackspace Dedicated Server Solution has been great as it has allowed us to concentrate on our core business, rather than making sure the website is always up and running."

On the backend, Dreams uses a cluster of dedicated hardware which means that additional servers are used to maximise resilience and uptime. The frontend uses multiple load-balanced web servers to provide redundancy and performance. Together, this provides a flexible and highly reliable infrastructure.

Significant eCommerce results were achieved over the Easter period, which is one of the busiest times of year for the retailer. According to Dreams, the enhanced performance and resilience of the site has encouraged 30 per cent more visits compared to Easter 2014. An improved shopping experience on mobile devices is a central part of this rise, with a third of Dreams.co.uk visitors now coming from smartphones. The website conversion rate has also surged by 25 per cent (over the Easter Period), a sign that the reliable infrastructure has grown confidence in buying Dreams products online.

The retailer set up its current solution after experiencing downtime during a busy shopping weekend. A cache error meant that the website was being put under more strain than expected which caused it to go down. Although this problem was resolved quickly, Dreams decided the website needed to be improved in order to meet its high service standards.

On top of the regular 24/7/365 support that Rackspace offers, it also has a team available which supports eCommerce and is made up of Magento specialists. Dreams has found these expertise very valuable when preparing the website for peak trading times, a process that begins six months in advance.

Jeff Cotten, MD Rackspace International adds: "Rackspace is known for the managed cloud services it delivers, but when it comes to eCommerce we're now going one step further. We've listened to what our retail customers want and subsequently introduced teams of specialists who focus on delivering platforms such as Magento and hybris.

"This is particularly useful for companies like Dreams which invests heavily in marketing campaigns that drive spikes in website traffic. Our specialists can work with customers and partners like Session Digital to help ensure that websites perform well during these times so that every penny of the marketing invesatment counts."
More info: www.rackspace.co.uk