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Ecommerce Hosting
World-class hosting for your online store
In ecommerce, a high-performance website helps you get and keep customers. Let us help by providing a robust infrastructure, Fanatical Support®, plus products and services to assist you in addressing your PCI requirements.
The explosion of ecommerce
The doors to your online store never close, and your customers have more and more ways to access your products. This year has already seen a huge growth in ecommerce sales driven by smartphones and tablets. But delivering an exceptional online shopping experience anywhere, anytime, on any device requires more than a great product and popular website (although these of course are a good place to start!). Read our infographic to see the latest trends in ecommerce in the UK market.
Maximise uptime
When your online store loads reliably, your visitors become loyal customers. Conversion rates improve, increasing your revenues. Rackspace Critical Application Services offers a 100% Production Platform Uptime Guarantee and a maximum 5-minute notification time for monitoring alerts.
Run your business, not your servers
You can spend your time patching servers and upgrading software. Or you can let us manage the day-to-day web hosting needs of your ecommerce website, while you spend your time growing your company.
Get speedier page load times
According to the Aberdeen Group, page load delays can cost an ecommerce website millions of pounds in sales per year[1]. Host with Rackspace and make sure your site loads quickly year-round—even during your busy season.
[1] The Aberdeen Group. “The Performance of Web Applications: Customers are Won or Lost in One Second.” November 30, 2008.All the tools you need
Our broad portfolio of products includes dedicated servers, public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and VMware® Managed Virtualisation. Our network of partnerships with ecommerce platforms, integrators, and members of the ecommerce ecosystem makes it easy to get end-to-end support for your store. It’s one reason we’re InternetRetailer.com’s Number 1 hosting provider to the top 1000 e-retailers.
Case studies
Mode Flowers combine a traditional high street flower shop experience with a powerful online presence. Read more.
AQuarterOf.co.uk is a fabulous, online, old-fashioned sweetshop. Read more.
The joy of working with a business partner like Rackspace is that you build an excellent working relationship with technical experts and business savvy people who genuinely understand and empathise with the commercial objectives
Joe Simms, Technical Director, Notonthehighstreet.com
Keep your customers safe while they shop
Did you know:
- Most victims of cyber attacks are targets of opportunity
- In 2011, only about 4% of cyber attacks were technically sophisticated
- Server compromises increased in 2011, up 18% from 2010
- Most companies that run compromised websites are unaware of a security breach for weeks
- 97% of website security breaches are avoidable by means of simple or intermediate PCI controls
Source: VerizonBusiness.com, 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report.
How PCI-DSS and Rackspace can help
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) prescribes controls that help protect your customers’ data—not just credit card data. Implementing PCI-DSS controls can help your customers can spend confidently. Let us help by providing you with infrastructure and services to assist you in addressing your requirements. You can use Rackspace products and services to:
Plan
We can help you assess your hosted environment and recommend solutions to help you meet your security and compliance requirements
Do
We implement security controls that help you meet your requirements.
Check
You can use these services to monitor your security controls and hosted environment:
- Vulnerability assessment
- Penetration testing
- Threat management
- Log management
Act
We help you implement the changes you require.
PCI controls for your dedicated environment
You will need to enforce these 12 requirements from the PCI-DSS standard. Here’s how we can help with each requirement.
| You must implement the following PCI controls: | Rackspace can help by providing: |
|---|---|
| Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data. | Managed Firewall |
| Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters. | Vulnerability Assessment Services |
| Protect stored cardholder data. | Not applicable — you must implement this requirement |
| Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks. | SSL Certificates |
| Use and regularly update anti-virus software or programs. | Managed End Point Protection Suite |
| Develop and maintain secure systems and applications. | Web Application Firewall |
| Restrict access to cardholder data on a need-to-know basis. | Managed Active Directory |
| Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access. | Two-Factor Authentication |
| Restrict physical access to cardholder data. | Data Center Security |
| Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data. | Log Management |
| Regularly test security systems and processes. | Threat Management |
| Maintain a policy that addresses information security for all personnel. | Not applicable — you must implement this requirement |
Remember that simply hosting with Rackspace doesn’t automatically make you PCI-compliant. And while technologies can help in your efforts toward PCI compliance, tools like Firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems and Log Management appliances are only as effective as the people and processes in place to install and manage them.
We can work with you to build a framework for outlining and managing the process and technology requirements of PCI-DSS.
PCI and your cloud environment
When you host your environment with Rackspace, you may also sign up with a separate payment processor who provides tokenisation—replacing credit card data with meaningless numbers or “tokens”. When you accept a payment, non-PCI data routes to your Rackspace-hosted environment, while the tokenised credit card data routes to your payment processor.
Since your customers’ credit card data does not route to your Rackspace hosted infrastructure—only the payment processor—your Rackspace environment stays out of the scope of your PCI requirements.
Learn more about Security & Compliance at Rackspace
Common reference architectures
Our wide range of products and services lets you run your ideal ecommerce infrastructure at Rackspace. View these reference architectures below to see some popular configurations, and read our blog post to learn more.
You can also view two technical case studies below, with details on the infrastructures employed by A Quarter Of.co.uk and Mode Flowers.
Cost-Effective
Configuration notes:
- 2-tier, cloud-based architecture
- Customer credit card information stored in third-party payment gateway
- Can add servers to scale horizontally
Intermediate
Configuration notes:
- 3-tier, cloud-based architecture
- Customer credit card information stored in third-party payment gateway
- Web tier containing product catalog logic built on Cloud Servers
- Application tier built on Cloud Servers stores shopping cart and checkout logic
- Transactional data stored either in Cloud Databases or a database running on a Cloud Server in the same Cloud Network
Service recommendations:
- Choose a managed cloud account to save time by letting us manage your infrastructure
Advanced
Configuration notes:
- 3-tier, hybrid (cloud + dedicated) architecture
- Customer credit card information stored in third-party payment gateway
- Web tier containing product catalog logic built on Cloud Servers
- Application tier built on Cloud Servers stores shopping cart and checkout logic
- Transactional data stored in dedicated servers
Service recommendations:
- Choose a managed cloud account to save time by letting us manage your infrastructure
Premier
Configuration notes:
- 3-tier, self-contained, PCI-capable hybrid (cloud + dedicated) architecture
- Customer credit card information stored in dedicated servers
- Web tier containing product catalog logic built on dedicated servers — can burst into Cloud Servers during high demand
- Application tier built on dedicated servers stores shopping cart and checkout logic
- Transactional data stored in dedicated servers
Service recommendations:
- Choose a managed cloud account to save time by letting us manage your infrastructure
- Select Critical Application Services for a super-aggressive SLA with a 100% production platform uptime guarantee and a 2x service level credit
- Work with our Advisory Services team to plan your seamless journey to the cloud
Case Studies
AQuarterOf.co.uk
AQuarterOf.co.uk is a fabulous, online, old-fashioned sweetshop that brings childhood memories of old time confectionary to life. Their colourful, zany website features a charming and compulsive compilation of captivating, childhood confectionery - all those lovely sweetshop goodies that you thought had been rendered obsolete by the passage of time, and the loss of those lovely big glass jars in sweet shop windows. Their mouth-watering collection comprises everything you can remember and more.
Read more.
Mode Flowers
In today’s tough economic climate, the UK high street is an ever increasingly expensive place for small to medium sized businesses to operate, and generating a profit is by no means an easy task. Breaking free of these restrictions, Mode Flowers is an ecommerce business that combines a traditional high street flower shop experience with a powerful online presence. Their highly successful site offers realistically priced bouquets and arrangements for every budget and occasion and next day flowers and gifts delivery. Read more.
Magento hosting
Rackspace partners with Magento to architect and design optimised infrastructures for your online presence. Our deep knowledge of the platform ensures you'll get the best out of your Magento solution.
Find Out More