Sainsbury's Xmas outage a lesson in elastic computing - cloud man

Workbooks' Ian Moyse says online retailers need to start architecting their systems to fit their customers' needs

A vendor boss hit by the Sainsbury's online outage on Sunday night has urged online retailers to pursue elastic computing models to avoid a similar fate.

Ian Moyse, sales director of cloud-based CRM vendor Workbooks, was one of thousands of UK consumers to have experienced difficulties with Sainsbury's website on 21 December.

According to Moyse, Sainsbury's online site had been slow and "creaking" for most of the day before going down several times in the evening and finally hitting "meltdown" at 10.50pm. Customers wishing to snag a Christmas delivery slot had to close their carts by 11pm.

ASDA and Waitrose also suffered technical issues amid the pre-Christmas shopping rush.

In a statement sent to CRN, Sainsbury's said it had "solved the technical problems on our website quickly on Sunday night".

"Since then we have contacted all affected customers and worked with them to resolve any outstanding issues," it added.

Moyse said it looked like Sainsbury's' systems were not able to handle the peak loads associated with the Christmas rush.

"Companies looking to self-service clients in the online world really need to step up and architect to the customer's needs to avoid such fiascos," Moyse said.