Atman’s IT services operate in the new Frisco.pl magazine

Frisco.pl is a leader among online shops dealing in the sale of food products (e-grocery) and household items along with their delivery to consumers.

Obviously, while running this type of business, the quality, freshness of the goods, as well as the speed and precision of completing the order and timely delivery are of great importance.

It is possible to meet these conditions only thanks to the trouble-free operation of storage systems. The responsibility for guaranteeing it at Frisco.pl was assumed by Atman.

Online sales and delivery of food products – especially fresh and frozen ones – to retail customers is a very demanding undertaking in terms of logistics.

Grzegorz Bielecki, Management Board Member at Frisco.pl
“A model example of our customer is a family making larger purchases once or twice a month. For over a dozen years on the market, we have earned the trust of customers, thanks to which we can boast of the largest “basket” in Poland. On average, it has a value of over PLN 260 net and contains about 60 products. We are also distinguished by the fact that customers appreciate the quality of the goods they receive. The quality of fresh products enjoys special recognition, thanks to which those who make their purchases with us often stay with us for many years. Some have already placed hundreds of orders.”

The IT environment of the Frisco.pl shop consists of four areas. The first two are the front-end and back-end of the online shop. The third one is an application for mobile devices. The fourth area – where we cooperate with Atman – is the infrastructure that underlies the warehouse and accounting applications, i.e. ERP (resource management) and WMS (warehouse management) tools.

The consequence of the dynamic development of Frisco and the rapid increase in the number of goods sold was the need to create an automated distribution center with an area of 11,000 sq m, facilitating the sale of products in the e-grocery model. This has been the first investment of this type in Poland on such a large scale.

A new warehouse, lots of different types of goods and customers expecting quick and timely service (the customer can designate a 60-minute delivery window). The daily fulfillment of such stringent customer service conditions is a complicated task based largely on warehouse automation solutions. To guarantee fast and reliable operation of these systems and warehouse continuity, Frisco.pl needed a professional, stable IT environment.

When creating its infrastructure, Frisco.pl decided to rely on leasing dedicated servers, arrays and network equipment from Atman.

The project started in May 2019. From the very beginning, Atman participated in it, providing hardware resources that were used to build the distribution center IT infrastructure from scratch and enable it to operate.

As part of this implementation, five servers are used on which the VMWare virtualization environment was installed, two servers with an SQL database and NetApp all-flash array storing company information. Full redundancy was ensured for all solutions.

Frisco also uses a number of other services provided by Atman. The cooperation began with the implementation of hardware, virtualization platform and software, thanks to which it was possible to quickly launch the new data center. But Atman engineers also monitor the work of the devices and update the software.

In addition, Frisco uses the automatic backup service (Atman Backup), which prevents data loss and enables quick recovery in the event of a failure. Encrypted data backups are stored on a dedicated backup platform maintained in the Atman Data Center Warsaw-1, away from the primary data processing center (off premises), which ensures their security.

Witold Matuszewski, IT Director, Frisco.pl
“We also considered IT equipment leasing, i.e. its implementation in our own infrastructure as well as independent configuration and maintenance. However, we gave up this model, and, among other things, it was the offer made by Atman that convinced us to make that decision. According to the offer, comprehensive IT environment service was not more expensive than leasing. The leasing model also carries the risk that in the event of a sudden increase in the company’s turnover – which would translate into the need to expand the data center – you cannot withdraw from previously implemented investments, e.g. in insufficiently scalable solutions. In this respect, the subscription model is flexible – during the service we can replace the systems with more efficient ones and thus ensure our business continuity.”

• Trouble-free operation of the distribution center thanks to the fast and stable operation of warehouse and accounting applications.
• Peace of mind of the IT department thanks to comprehensive service, as part of which the service provider provides hardware and system software, verification of work correctness and servicing.
• Resignation from the investment in own devices and the adoption of the subscription model under which the fee for the use of the server infrastructure and arrays is fixed, provided the Client with financial savings and predictability of IT expenses.
• IT environment flexibility – Frisco.pl has the ability to easily scale the infrastructure and resign cost-free from the existing solutions and quickly implement new ones.
• Regular backups guarantee data protection against loss as a result of a catastrophe, human error or malware attack.

Choosing a service thanks to which an external company assumes responsibility for monitoring the operation of devices and their servicing, as well as data backup, means taking quite a problem off your shoulders. As part of comprehensive care, when the equipment fails to work or the system software malfunctions, the client is guaranteed a response time in which the service provider will eliminate the effects of the problem and restore full functionality of the IT tools.

Thanks to Atman’s guaranteed continuity of the IT environment, the Frisco.pl shop can focus on its operations, without the risk of its sudden downtime or uncertainty about its duration. In addition, IT expenditure stability is guaranteed thanks to fixed fees for the care over IT systems.