The Twelve Days of Scale-Out: Zappos.com Uses MySQL Enterprise to Power its Growth & Exceptional Customer Service

Mega-Popular Shoe Site Recently Named the Internet‘s #1 Most-Available Retailer

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- June 18, 2007 -- MySQL AB today announced that Zappos.com subscribes to its MySQL Enterprise commercial database offering to help manage the e-commerce site’s growth and market-leading customer service. Zappos.com also recently achieved the #1 rating as the most-available Internet retailer, as reported by Gomez Inc.

Zappos thinks of itself as a customer-service company that happens to sell shoes and handbags online. LOTS of shoes and handbags. Since its founding in 1999, Zappos has grown to 1,000 employees – and its website now carries over 1,000 name brands, over 150,000 styles, and nearly 3 million products in stock and ready for immediate shipment. It is also projected to generate $800 million in gross merchandise sales this year.

The company built its innovative business model and E-commerce site from scratch in order to create a better way to shop for consumers tired of finding that their most-desired items were always out of stock at traditional retailers.

Zappos' 'Growing' Challenge:

In the earliest start-up days of Zappos.com, the company needed to properly balance their enterprise database requirements with the realities of a not-so-limitless IT budget. After evaluating several open source alternatives, they selected MySQL because it was the most robust, affordable database software available at the time.

As Zappos’ business began to grow so quickly, MySQL grew along with them. Even today, Zappos’ development and production systems teams still consider MySQL as the best solution for their IT infrastructure.

"MySQL provides the perfect blend of an enterprise-level database and a cost-effective technology solution," said Kris Ongbongan, Zappos’ IT Manager of Production Systems. "In my opinion, MySQL is the only database we would ever trust to power the Zappos.com website."

Zappos' Scale-Out Solution:

Zappos.com has implemented a modern Scale-Out architecture with MySQL to power its mission-critical website, underlying systems infrastructure and business-support tools. It features two master MySQL database servers and five replicated, load-balanced slaves to handle high traffic volume -- assuring fast performance and high availability for their online customers.

In addition, Zappos.com has subscribed to MySQL AB’s premium ‘MySQL Enterprise’ database service to receive automated software updates, proactive monitoring/advisory tools, and 24x7 access to the vendor’s professional technical support staff.

“Our production systems and development teams really benefit from having the immediate support available to answer any technical and production questions,” says Ongbongan. “Knowing that MySQL AB will be there to assist us is a big safety net for us. It gives us great peace of mind.”

MySQL's 'Twelve Days of Scale-Out'

Each day from June 11-22, the MySQL Web site will be highlighting how many of the world’s fastest-growing companies -- such as Zappos.com -- are using MySQL database technology to cost-effectively Scale-Out their successful online businesses.

The campaign is live at www.mysql.com/scaleout.

What is Scale-Out?

Scale-Out is a modern computing architecture that enables organizations to improve application performance and scalability on an incremental, as-needed basis by adding multiple replicated database servers on low-cost commodity hardware. This is in contrast to a ‘Scale-Up’ approach, which requires organizations to make a large up-front investment in more expensive and complex server hardware and database licenses in order to add capacity.

On June 20, MySQL will be hosting a special worldwide Webinar titled, “Scale-Out & Replication Best Practices for High-Growth Businesses”. To register for this event, please visit www.mysql.com/scaleoutwebinar.

About MySQL

MySQL AB develops and supports a family of high-performance, affordable database products. The company’s flagship offering is 'MySQL Enterprise’, a comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools, and premium support services.

MySQL is the world's most popular open source database software, with over 11 million active installations. Many of the world's largest and fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time and money powering their high-volume Web sites, business-critical systems and packaged software -- including industry leaders such as Yahoo!, Alcatel-Lucent, Google, Nokia and YouTube.

With headquarters in the United States and Sweden -- and operations around the world -- MySQL AB supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business model. For more information about MySQL, please visit www.mysql.com.

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MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the USA and other countries. Other products or company names mentioned may be the trademarks of their respective corporations.