In a competitive market, customers expect access 24x7 to the eCommers site from any device, and if they can’t buy what they want when they want, they will simply go elsewhere.

John Lewis is one of the UKs leading eCommerce platforms, with a demand profile which is massively influenced by promotional activity such as Black Friday. To illustrate that - February is a low point in Retail as customers finances are recovering from Christmas, customer orders might be as low as 200/hr yet peak at 20,000/hr during Black Friday, 100 times higher.

Together with Craig we discussed what challenges he must face operating such a site and what approach he took.