Tesco.com has its own private cloud computing service

A short time ago I responded to our leadership team’s concerns that the grocery API, still very much an R&D project (and on its own service) at this time, may not cope with the load when we come to launch our mobile grocery applications soon.

Having built up some skills and experience in using Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Computing platform, I offered that up as a possible solution. After all, the grocery API is built in Microsoft.Net as an ASP.Net application with a Microsoft SQL 2008 server database to manage sessions - it was a quick and easy task to convert and transfer it up into Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

So of course I told Tesco.com’s Infrastructure Design and Security team of my plans. They were not pleased. They were disappointed. Disappointed that I hadn’t sought their help first.

I argued that my R&D code was not something that should be put in a production context. “After all,” I said, “R&D code is here to prove the point and move on - hardly flawless”.

“Except,” pointed out Sam Hill, their team leader, “It’s not is it? You’ve created an API and got the leadership team all excited about the possibilities and the next thing we know is that mobile grocery apps are on their way, by the thousand. Didn’t you put on your blog 100,000 downloads of the Clubcard app in a week? Why didn’t you think of us when it came to hosting your API? We can cope with that load! If you are worried about your code, we can provide an isolated cloud service to host your API on, where it can’t reach any other part of our network!”.

I stood dumbfounded and somewhat humbled. Before me was Sam’s profound fact:
Tesco.com has its own private cloud computing service.

Sam may not call it a “cloud” but his team is proud that they have created a comprehensive hosting service with a fleet of hundreds of web servers connected to large number of business, database, and operations servers that all run our service. They are resilient, scalable, duplicatable, and mirrored in several data centres. That’s what they do to keep every site on the Tesco.com domain on the air 24/7.

They can bring more servers (both physical and virtual) into play during loads, then pare back and save power off-peak. They monitor performance, have the weapons capable of fending off viruses and denial-of-service attacks alongside a comprehensive firewall system. They are surrounded by ceiling mounted 32” HDTV screens with graphs that tell them of their cloud’s rude health. They know they have built an amazing system.

And I had gone and said “Azure” to the leadership team?
The Tesco version of Azure is what Sam designs for his living.

Or is that, the Microsoft version of the Tesco cloud is called "Azure".
We came first, after all!

The Tesco Grocery API will be hosted by Tesco.com.
Thank you, Sam and team.

Are we Good or Bad? Happy or Sad?

Here I am back at work extolling the virtues of a 'stay-cation' by having a Britain-acquired suntan without the need for flying (hah!), and showing my age with a quote from a great Tina Turner song.

I always enjoying working with the Marketing department, and most of all I enjoy chatting with their Insight team - a group of people who find out the customer perspectives on our business.

They have shared with me some work they have been doing with social networking data to see if they can use this 'crowd-source' of information to find out what people think of Tesco. They are even looking at how our customer service staff might be able to interact with customers who are having problems with us.

The team having been working with a company called Right Now who specialise in monitoring clouds of social media to uncover what good and bad things are being said about us. One of the most interesting reports we get from Right Now is a distillation of Twitter feeds where customers mention Tesco. Importantly, each 'tweet' is analysed to discover the sentiment of the message and is marked on a grade from positive to negative.

Seeing as how Twitter feeds are entirely open and in the public domain, and tweets are available in their untold millions, it's a perfectly legitimate source. However you may argue that people of the sort who use Twitter and splurge their thoughts on that network may not exactly be representative of the Tesco customer base. You would be partially right - after all, Twitter tends to be used by a younger demographic with enough wealth to run a mobile smart phone and/or have easy internet access wherever they are. However the sheer weight of numbers allows us to get an overall sentiment and, more importantly, achieve early warning of any change in sentiment (more negative or positive) for some reason.

For (contrived) example, supposing we ran out some important product that people expect us to sell, for example bananas. Tweets suddenly appearing with negative sentiment that bananas are missing could, in theory, allow us to take action earlier than discovering it later. If tweets reveal that a group of stores are affected, we could home in on the problem more quickly. For example, it could be a broken-down lorry that planned to visit these stores and its stock needs to be transferred with greater urgency than just using 'normal procedures'.

Bigger business challenges can also be uncovered - take these recent negative tweets about Tesco Clubcard that uncover miserable cashiers, problems registering a clubcard or changing address, and an upset 17 year old too young to own a card (click image to read text):

On the other hand, there are plenty of positive tweets - this excerpt uncovers the joys that can only come from Clubcard Points and Clubcard Vouchers when used with various deals. This shows us that we really scored with these offers and its' good to get the feedback. It also reveals (again) the importance of reaching 18 years old so as to be allowed to have a Clubcard. (click image to read text):

A real quick win when it comes to finding out what key words (and by inference, sentiment) people are using when they Tweet about a subject is to use Tweet Cloud. This service finds out the top 30 or so words being used alongside a search word in tweets. The more commonly a word is used, the bigger it is in the cloud.

Here are two clouds taken this morning (Mon 19 April 2010) that show an intriguing difference about people who use the word Tesco in their tweets, and people who want to let you know they are talking about Tesco by using the hash-tag #tesco.

First, a 'Tesco' cloud (click here for a live cloud):

So I'm seeing stuff on the Iceland volcano, a couple of competitors, voucher (no doubt Clubcard vouchers), words such as 'clothing' and 'entertainment' - both are being promoted at the moment so its nice to see people reacting - and only one expletive.

Compare this to the cloud of tweets where the authors want you to know they are talking about Tesco by using '#tesco' (click here for a live cloud)

Here the sentiment is more business-like - about jobs, competitors, and the occasional politics.

The insight team are adopting the strategy of listening at the moment, and as you can see there is much to listen to on the internet's public domain. I'll keep in touch with them as they plan their move into the 'interaction' stage.

In the mean time, check your brand sentiment. Since you and your brand have been together,

as Tina sang, times are good or bad, happy or sad?