Dell helps Skyscanner's private cloud take flight

Low-cost flight finder Skyscanner has opted to move from public to private cloud, establishing two new converged datacentres across the world.

Over the past year, the company saw an 84 per cent increase in traffic and more than 25 million app downloads. The move from a public to a private cloud was made as the organisation felt this would better support its growth targets.

Skyscanner enlisted Dell to design and build the datacentres – one in the UK, the other in Singapore, with plans to open a third in Hong Kong by the end of January. They feature Dell EqualLogic Blade Arrays, Dell PowerEdge blade servers and Dell Networking MXL blade switching hardware.

EqualLogic hybrid SSD arrays, which auto-tier the most active application data, were deployed and the firm also opted for technical support through the Dell ProSupport Mission Critical four-hour response service.

According to Dell, the environment has been designed to allow Skyscanner to provide a high quality, undisrupted service to people searching for travel deals through its website.

Aisling Keegan, general manager and executive director of preferred accounts at Dell UK, said: “Web-based services across the world are experiencing great market opportunities as consumers and businesses increasingly spend online.

“As these organisations grow and become more successful…providing a consistently high quality of service becomes crucial to long-term success. Dell’s converged end-to-end solutions and services provide the scalability, flexibility and performance required to help organisations deploy powerful datacentre environments to support heavy demand and accommodate rapid business growth.”