Harvey Norman Big Buys, an online franchisee of the well-known retail operation, launched in April this year, just two months after the decision was made to proceed with the idea.
Kaine Escott, director of Harvey Norman Big Buys, told iTWire “We were on a very tight timeframe” of around seven to eight weeks to launch the site, and “we knew we were going to be in a volatile environment” not just with normal seasonal fluctuations but due to the effects of Gerry Harvey’s media appearances.
Taken together, these factors meant “the cloud was almost the only solution,” he said. From there, picking Azure “was a fairly easy decision” due to Mr Escott’s previous relationship with Microsoft when he worked at Harvey Norman. “We didn’t even shop it around.”