The company cites SoftIron’s task-specific approach to (open source software-defined storage software) Ceph as critical determinations for the selection.
SoftIron’s Ceph-optimised storage solution, HyperDrive, tackles mission-critical issues such as scalability, resiliency, and cloud-native flexibility.
The integration of SoftIron’s HyperDrive comes as THG prepares for growth after raising £1.88 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) in September 2020 - the largest UK IPO on record, according to the company.
“At THG, part of our success is a result of our bold ambition to do things differently, and by so doing, to create new efficiencies and opportunities that put ourselves and our customers ahead of the curve,” said Schalk Van der Merwe, CTO at THG.
“While open source solutions may seem like a ‘science project’ for non-tech companies – for us, being cloud-agnostic, free of lock-in, and achieving ‘Cloud Native Without Cloud,’ is all strategically important within our architecture.
“We love the ‘task-specific’ approach SoftIron is taking to make open-source Ceph deployable and manageable at scale for enterprises like ours, while at the same time creating efficiencies that reduce our environmental footprint.”
With plans to scale globally, THG has built an e-commerce platform called THG Ingenuity that exists within its carbon-neutral THG Eco initiative.
Phil Straw, CEO of SoftIron said, “SoftIron’s HyperDrive storage appliances are the ultimate productization of Ceph, providing enterprise-grade capabilities in a package that delivers the best of both worlds in raw performance and green efficiency.
“We’ve engineered HyperDrive storage hardware from the source code and motherboard on up – a method which we call ‘task-specific’.
“We’ve custom-built our hardware to support the source code first and have thus eliminated the inefficiencies that exist using the legacy ‘commodity’ approach.
“The result is a powerful storage appliance providing the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ benefits of Ceph (including the flexibility of universal block, object, and file storage) in a powerful and hyper-efficient package that delivers advantages in both performance and TCO.”