Ask Jo Drake, CIO of THG, why she loves her job, and she immediately mentions diversity. “THG is so diverse that our technology teams face every type of challenge you can imagine,” explains Drake. “But that’s what makes working for THG so exciting. We’re always being challenged to solve new problems.”
THG operates across many business lines. It develops, manufactures, and sells numerous beauty and nutrition brands, including Myprotein, Perricone MD, and Biossance. It operates commerce sites and subscription boxes such as LOOKFANTASTIC and Glossybox. It even provides cloud hosting and end-to-end e-commerce solutions for major brands such as Unity, NordVPN, and Coca-Cola.
Finding success at THG means constant innovation. Technology teams are encouraged to move quickly, fail fast, and pivot on a dime. The company can only take these risks because it invested in a solid data center foundation that can support all of THG’s data needs—including 400 global websites, artificial intelligence (AI) training models, and thousands of e-commerce databases.
As a result, THG can achieve its business outcomes faster. Flexible, guaranteed storage as-a-service can scale to support growth—all while reducing THG’s power consumption by 80% and bolstering its award-winning customer service with AI.
It is this pioneering spirit that has earned THG this year’s Pure Storage Greatest of All Time Breakthrough Award.
Keeping Critical Infrastructure Available
THG operates over 35 data centers globally to support its highly diverse operations. Drake and team decided that they needed to simplify and standardize their data storage environment, eliminating the need to track multiple contracts, renewal periods, and support contracts. The company chose the Pure Storage platform for all-flash storage—and never looked back.
Today, the Pure Storage platform, including FlashArray™ and FlashBlade®, powers a wide range of THG services: hosting websites and e-commerce sites for THG and its customers, powering seamless online gaming experiences, and supporting AI across all stages of the customer lifecycle. The Pure Storage platform provides the reliability to keep online portals available at any time, even during critical, high-volume periods such as Black Friday.
“Everything that’s mission critical runs on Pure Storage,” says Schalk Van Der Merwe, CTO at THG. “And it’s so simple and easy to work with that we don’t even need a dedicated storage engineer. Anyone on our team can learn to work with Pure.”
Driving Commerce with Purpose
Freedom from complexity gives THG the freedom to focus on expanding through new business opportunities, such as delivering high-performance computing and storage solutions for healthcare providers. It also supports THG’s sustainability initiative—THG x Planet Earth—to become carbon neutral by 2030: migrating to energy-efficient Pure Storage systems will reduce power consumption by up to 80%, even as capacity expands.
As the business continues to grow, the Pure Storage Evergreen® subscription portfolio gives THG the choice and flexibility in how it consumes storage. Evergreen//Forever™ eliminates downtime—and e-waste—for maintenance or upgrades, greatly simplifying the user experience of purchased data storage. And with the Evergreen//One™storage-as-a-service subscription, THG can quickly expand to onboard more clients to Ingenuity, its proprietary e-commerce platform that powers digital retail experiences for global brands. When customers want to grow their businesses, they can rely on THG to scale quickly and provide just the right volumes for their needs.
AI: Taking the Customer Experience to the Next Level
THG is driven by the desire to make an impact through digital transformation and innovation. This spirit has enabled the company to embrace automation and AI at every step in its operations over the last decade, from personalized product recommendations to managing traffic and transactions for its Ingenuity Cloud Engine.
AI also plays a big role in THG’s customer service strategy. It delivers automated translations and helps customer service representatives choose from more than 45,000 communication templates. As a result, representatives can provide thoughtful responses in less time to customers anywhere in the world.
“We’re not afraid to take risks at THG,” says Van Der Merwe. “Having a solid technology infrastructure in place gives us the freedom to try new things, adopt early initiatives, and shift gears.”
Leaning Into Global Growth Opportunities
For THG, technology is key to helping the company continue to expand with diverse businesses while reaching new markets around the world. With a robust data storage foundation to build upon, THG’s technology teams can continue to disrupt traditional retail industries by providing products, services, and experiences that set them apart.
Congratulations to the THG team for winning this year’s Pure Storage Greatest of All Time Award, and for all their accomplishments to date.
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