The Hut Group (THG) selects Earth Capital portfolio company, SoftIron, for Eco-Friendly Mission-Critical Enterprise Storage

SoftIron Ltd., the leader in purpose-built and performance-optimised data centre solutions, today announced that The Hut Group (THG), the UK’s leading multi-product, multi-website online retailer, has selected SoftIron’s HyperDrive® as the storage backbone for its global THG Ingenuity e-commerce platform. The partnership demonstrates the vital role of technology in achieving carbon neutrality whilst delivering superior performance.

SoftIron’s HyperDrive storage solution excels in power, performance, and efficiency using up to 80% less energy and generating up to a fifth of the heat of other data centres and supports mission-critical issues such as scalability, resiliency, and cloud-native flexibility. The implementation helps the e-commerce giant achieve a resilient, agile infrastructure to power its world-leading retail platform while retaining its CarbonNeutral® certification.

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. With plans to scale globally, THG has built a state-of-the-art e-commerce platform called THG Ingenuity that delivers enterprise-class scalability and resiliency, is cloud-native, provides superior efficiency and exists within its carbon-neutral THG Eco initiative.

“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. “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.”

As THG grows and the trend towards more edge infrastructure deployments gains momentum, Schalk and his team will continue to add to their 24 data centers across the UK, Europe, USA, and Asia. “SoftIron’s solution offers superior management & resilience capabilities without sacrificing efficiency, which perfectly support our short and long term objectives for the business,” says Schalk. “ We’re already operational with HyperDrive in the UK, Germany and the US and look forward to working together to deliver a new class of service and support for our customers across the globe.”

Phil Straw, CEO of SoftIron said “SoftIron’s HyperDrive storage appliances are the ultimate productisation of Ceph, providing enterprise-grade capabilities in a package that delivers the best of both worlds in raw performance and green efficiency.” 

Avent Bezuidenhoudt, Investment Director of Earth Capital said: “Congratulations to SoftIron for securing this long-term partnership which highlights THG’s commitment to sustainability and carbon neutrality. It is great to see further recognition of SoftIron’s impressive storage capability resulting in up to 80% less energy usage and heat generation compared to other technologies, whilst still delivering improved efficiency, performance and reliability.”