Buyagift.com Unwraps Savvis’ Virtualised IT Infrastructure Just in Time for Holiday Season

LONDON -

- Leading UK online gift retailer chooses Savvis to support expansion and seasonal peaks

Buyagift, one of the UK’s leading gift sites attracting more than 600,000 unique visitors a month, is preparing for a busy Christmas and holiday season. In ensuring that they do not lose focus on the core services they provide, Buyagift decided to outsource the day to day management of its core systems and have selected Savvis, a global leader in outsourced internet infrastructure services for the enterprise, to manage and host the six websites that support its online retail business in the UK.

Under the terms of the agreement, Savvis provides a virtualised utility hosting environment for Buyagift’s online storefronts: its own and five other ‘white label’ storefronts branded by other prominent retail companies. Savvis also manages the network infrastructure and security services that support Buyagift’s core business applications. This agreement has recently been extended to provide additional managed servers and storage to support their new personalised gifts service.

“The hosting support and provisioning times from Savvis have been exceptional since we started our working relationship in 2006, said Syed Kashif Abbas, Head of IT at Buyagift. “In our line of business, the availability of a website and page response times make or break a sale.”

As online shopping becomes ever more popular, Buyagift has expanded significantly, with its web traffic increasing by more than 70% between January and December 2008. Seasonal periods, especially Christmas and Fathers’ Day, see Buyagift’s traffic increase by over 30% during the Christmas shopping period alone.

Managing seasonal traffic with unpredictable bursts, whilst at the same time ensuring quick response times during a customer’s buying experience, was a challenge for Buyagift. They needed to ensure that their outsourcing provider was not only reliable but also allowed them to scale up and down as required, often at short notice. After a comprehensive review of leading UK service providers, Buyagift selected Savvis.

“Savvis’ virtualised utility hosting environment is key to making our online retail service flexible, scalable and resilient. As we continue to expand our customer base and operations across Europe, it is good to know that we can be confident of excellent service standards, strict security procedures and high availability. Savvis’ reputation as a reliable hosting provider has also played a key role in helping us win new business over the past three years,” Abbas continues.

Using Savvis’ utility-based platform, Buyagift benefits from a high service level agreement (SLA) and the capability to meet seasonal peaks in demand with network bandwidth and new server capacity when needed, which can be provisioned in just days. A stark contrast to the weeks previously required to increase capacity of Buyagift’s infrastructure.

To safeguard customer and business data the entire Buyagift service is hosted in Savvis’ ISO 27001 accredited UK data centres and is protected by a range of Savvis’ security services.

“We are delighted to be working with Buyagift and are committed to providing the flexible infrastructure base from which they can quickly and flexibly grow their retail business,” said Brian Klingbeil, Managing Director EMEA for Savvis. “As we continue our relationship we will be working closely with Buyagift to identify new technology solutions such as cloud compute infrastructure that will help Buyagift introduce new services, grow profitably and enhance their customers’ online experiences.”

About Savvis

Savvis, Inc. (Nasdaq: SVVS) is a global leader in outsourced internet infrastructure services for the enterprise. More than 4,000 customers, including 40 percent of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500, use Savvis to reduce capital expense, improve service levels and harness the latest advances in cloud computing. For more information about Savvis, visit www.savvis.co.uk

About Buyagift

Founded in 1999, Buyagift is the UK’s leading gift experience company. With a turnover of more than 15 million pounds Sterling in 2008, Buyagift now works with more than 400 suppliers to offer over 2200 gifts and experiences. Listed 55th in the Sunday Times Fasttrack fastest growing privately owned UK companies in 2006, Buyagift Plc is currently growing at a rate of more than 20 per cent year on year. Buyagift has more than 3000 affiliate sites and dozens of third party clients including ASDA, Argos, Clinton Cards, Tesco, Play.com and Littlewoods Home Shopping. The Buyagift website attracts more than 600,000 unique visitors per month. With its head office in New Barnet, Buyagift employs over 60 people and has recently expanded into Europe with its French operation, Coolcadeau.fr. For more information, visit the website at www.buyagift.com

Savvis Forward-Looking Statements

This document may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from Savvis’ expectations. Certain factors that could affect actual results are set forth as risk factors in Savvis’ SEC reports and filings, including its annual report on Form 10-K and all subsequent filings as well as the risk that potential product cost and performance benefits may not be realized for any particular customer. Savvis assumes no obligation to update or supplement forward-looking statements.

Source: Savvis, Inc.

Elizabeth Shumacker, Head of International Marketing of Savvis, Inc., +44(0)118-322-6378, or elizabeth.shumacker at savvis.net; Sue Lynn Goh, +(0)207-309-1016, or Blair Metcalfe, +(0)207-309-1024, both of Ogilvy PR Worldwide, savvisuk at uk.ogilvypr.com, for Savvis, Inc.