Can you introduce us to Photoweb?
Photoweb is a French e-commerce company located in Saint-Egrève, in the Grenoble area.
The company has not ceased to develop since 2003 following the rise of ADSL and has built up gradually. First in the field of photographic prints, then in that of personalized photo products (photo albums, large formats, etc.), always as a producer and distributor of its own products.
Today, the company has more than 200 employees and is the No.2 French online printing company. Photoweb became a subsidiary of the Exacompta Clairefontaine group in 2014.
In early 2016, the company strengthened its position by acquiring the mobile app Lalalab, the European leader in photo printing exclusively from a mobile app.
In 2017, Photoweb launched the mobile application Piiics. This new brand allows the company to reach a different target on an innovative model: the “freemium”.
At the end of 2018, Photoweb acquired Joomeo, a company specialized in photo and video data storage for professionals and individuals.
Finally, in 2020, Photoweb acquired Fizzer, a specialist in online customizable postcards.
All these brands constitute the Photoweb Group called the Digital Photo Group since 2020.
Why did you choose Iguana Solutions as your partner to manage your web infrastructure?
Following a call for tenders involving several integrators, editors and manufacturers of specialized storage solutions, Iguana Solutions succeeded in convincing us on all aspects of the project, by proposing the most efficient solution for the Digital Photo Group, allowing for the long-term storage of all the data concerned:
- The technical aspects, by proposing an innovative solution that perfectly meets the challenges of the project;
- The organizational aspects, by setting up a light structure, with just the right amount of resources;
- And the financial aspects of course, because it is the nerve of the war.
How would you describe your daily collaboration with Iguana Solutions?
We started the solution in production in the summer of 2020, on three sites, with a volume that would allow us to maintain our growth over several months. After a few months of running in, the solution is now stable and we are confident for the future.
As we had hoped, this solution requires very little administration. Even though Iguana Solutions manages the hosting and availability of several Petabytes of data for us, it was not necessary to set up a heavy project monitoring organization on a daily basis, which is a very positive point for us.
What challenges does Iguana Solutions help you address? How is your collaboration beneficial?
The solution allows to store, at the best cost, a large volume of unstructured data (in the Petabyte range), in a highly available and secured way, and allowing the scalability of the platform.
By implementing this solution, the Photoweb Group (Digital Photo Group) has been able to offer its various business units a more reliable solution while making significant savings on storage costs compared to other solutions available on the market such as the public cloud.
This budgetary efficiency is a critical point for Digital Photo Group because a growth of our activity mechanically induces a growth of our storage volume.
What are the next challenges of Photoweb?
The company is in full swing! We are currently carrying out several projects that will be key for the structure of the company, from the implementation of a new ERP to the redesign of our sales channels.