The Wagner eCommerce Group Finds a Strategic Partner  

The Wagner eCommerce Group offers leading eCommerce platforms supporting six well-established brands across a range of products and businesses, including camping, fitness and health, swimming pools, household and electrical appliances, and bargain shopping. With a goal of ranking among the top three in every business category in Europe, the group is on a mission to make the world of eCommerce better. As a medium-sized company, it benefits greatly by taking advantage of a range of Akamai solutions.

As the “home of specialists,” the Wagner eCommerce Group combines comprehensive online expertise, a powerful infrastructure, and leading process know-how to effectively conduct online business in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. When it comes to being a successful driving force for businesses in digital retail, the group understands the importance of website availability and performance. Those critical factors help it deliver a positive shopping experience and customer satisfaction for the millions who visit its sites every year — visits that ultimately translate to conversions and revenue.

Knowing that cyberattacks can undermine even sophisticated websites, the group had used a web application firewall (WAF) from a specialized cybersecurity provider. This solution was unnecessarily complex and time-consuming to configure, straining security resources. Complicating matters, the company’s hosting provider lacked the bandwidth to mitigate DDoS attacks.

Moreover, the Wagner eCommerce Group experienced performance issues and was difficult to scale on demand during critical times such as Black Friday. According to Michél Gericke, Head of IT Infrastructure for the Wagner eCommerce Group, “Our customers should be able to access our online stores at all times and enjoy a fast, user-friendly, modern experience. If they can’t reach our stores, we lose both revenue and customer trust.”

When a malicious actor threatened to launch a DDoS attack if the company didn’t pay a ransom, the group sought a solution provider that could address a broader range of needs.

Akamai proved to be the partner the Wagner eCommerce Group sought. The group called upon App & API Protector and Edge DNS to address its immediate priority of protecting its web properties from DDoS attacks and other threats. 

“We are a lean IT team with a broad mandate and need solutions that are easy to configure and manage. We got that with Akamai through a simple migration,” he continues.

Akamai’s breadth of services was an additional benefit, and the company also harnessed Akamai’s CDN services. “As an eCommerce company, low latency is critical when it comes to our customers’ shopping experience. Since Akamai was able to deliver our website content faster than our hosting provider, we took advantage of that capability,” explains Gericke.

Inspired to bolster internal security along with external security, the Wagner eCommerce Group tried to roll out multi-factor authentication for all employees. It wanted to secure its VPN via a hardware token, but its internet gateway didn’t support YubiKey.

Gericke figured his team would have to come up with a workaround or find another VPN solution. However, he reconsidered when thinking about the right long-term strategy.

“There is no way around a Zero Trust architectural approach. And Akamai provides a Zero Trust client that safely and directly routes our employees to our back-end infrastructure. As such, Akamai lets us achieve the all-important balance of high levels of security with user friendliness.”

Since images play an essential role in the online shopping experience and the consumer’s path to purchase, the group is committed to staying up to date on the latest standards for media content. When it needed to evolve its 3 to 10 photos for each of its 230,000+ products to a new format, it turned to Akamai. 

With Akamai Image & Video Manager, the Wagner eCommerce Group avoided the need to reconfigure its back end or develop its own image converter. “Image Manager enabled us to upgrade to the current standard in one fell swoop without much effort on our part. In about an hour, we completed the conversion of nearly 1,000,000 images without tying up developer resources,” Gericke continues.

By taking advantage of Akamai products to ensure its web properties are available and protected, the Wagner eCommerce Group reduces strain on its infrastructure and frees employees to focus elsewhere. In fact, Gericke believes the company could not have grown as it has without relying upon Akamai’s offerings. “We can refocus our developers on projects that create value for our business and customers. It’s far better to use their time and talent in this way than have them develop an image converter or configure our servers to handle more site traffic.”

Continuing in that vein, Gericke touches upon the value of trusting Akamai solutions to propel the Wagner eCommerce Group into the future. “We want to be a top-tier eCommerce provider in our region. In addition to focusing on evolving our competencies in eCommerce and logistics, we can tap into Akamai’s deep portfolio as needed,” he concludes.

As one of the leading eCommerce companies, the Wagner eCommerce Group operates six leading brands with different specializations. Our formula for success: In all areas, we work with specialists who have expert knowledge and a genuine passion for their subject — and we ourselves work every day with a lot of drive and positive spirit to make the world of eCommerce better step by step. You can find out more at wagner-ecommerce.group or on Xing.