Vincent Nolan left and  Paul Schmitz, applegreen

Applegreen Group Head of Information Technology Vincent Nolan (left) and Paul Schmitz, Auxilion Chief Sales Officer

Applegreen has invested £435k in switching its legacy IT systems to a new cloud-based model.

The forecourt operator, which owns 243 forecourts across the UK, Ireland and the US since 2009, said moving to a new flexible format was part of its ambition to double the size of the business over the next three years.

“Exceptional growth rates had placed strains on our existing on-premise technology,” said Applegreen group head of IT Vincent Nolan. “The need to rapidly incorporate new sites and scale seamlessly with maximum reliability led to a major review of our IT infrastructure in 2015. It is business critical to ensure resilience, stability and scaleability when operations run 24/7 basis. Implementing such a major transformation programme without downtime is like trying to change the tyres on a Ferrari without a pit stop.” Cloud computing specialist Auxilion helped the forecourt operator transfer its data onto the platform.

Auxilion chief sales officer Paul Schmitz said it meant Applegreen would be able to upload all of a potential future store’s information over in minutes rather than the weeks it would have taken using a local computer.