Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 05 | Page 7

NEWS Fragrance Direct launches native shopping app The app has been built on Poq’s app commerce platform. Current Poq clients range from fast fashion brands Missguided and QUIZ, to department store group House of Fraser and online homeware brand MADE.com. Fragrance Direct replatformed its e-commerce solution to Salesforce Commerce Cloud earlier this year, which Poq seamlessly integrates with to reduce duplication of effort from the website to the app. The SaaS model that Poq offers was a key selling point for the team at Fragrance Direct. L eading UK beauty retailer, Fragrance Direct, is one of the first in the beauty sector to foray into the app commerce space. Rick Jowle, Founder and CEO at Fragrance Direct, said: “We’ve seen a huge shift towards mobile consumer behaviour, not just in sessions but also in revenue as well. We felt that producing an app would make sure we could give our mobile users a more optimised experience that was quicker and more streamlined than our current mobile site.” “We were interested in working with a company that’s constantly evolving and developing new technologies from which we can benefit. Poq’s SaaS-based model allows us to launch an app very quickly and keep up with development changes and bug fixes etc. without having a huge in-house team to manage it from the outset,” said Jowle. Øyvind Henriksen, CEO and Co-founder of Poq, said: “Widely adopted by fashion retailers, native shopping apps are less common in beauty and Fragrance Direct will be considered a pioneer by being one of the first-movers. We are confident they will see immediate and significant improvements on their mobile metrics and we’re excited to watch the story unfold.” ///////////////// Lincoln Council selects high capacity wireless links for Smart City S iklu Inc, a global market leader in mmWave solutions, has announced that its wireless radios have been deployed in the City of Lincoln, United Kingdom. These systems provide 14 high capacity wireless data links in support of a modern IP networked CCTV system, primarily to provide surveillance for the city and public spaces. The new wireless network is part of the Vision 2020 project announced in 2017, a three-year plan to build a Smart City improving the city’s infrastructure, roadways and parks and includes investing in a new transportation hub. Previously, the city’s CCTV system was transmitted back on traditional analogue fibre circuits, these were both costly and bandwidth-limiting. To install the wireless network, the City of Lincoln Council worked closely with security systems integrator Videcom Security Ltd, a company specialising in large multisite town and city centre public safety CCTV systems. www.intelligentcio.com The project involved installing Siklu’s mmWave EtherHaul E-band radios to deliver 1 Gbps full duplex capacity for the main backhaul resilient ring over the 80 GHz frequency. Utilising Siklu’s Layer 2 switch functionality to deliver resiliency and diversity routing, the network provides ‘mission critical’ up-time with automatic fail-over. In addition, Videcom installed Siklu’s 60 GHz V-band frequency radios to connect 300 cameras at the street level including citywide Urban Traffic Cameras. “The recent project with the City of Lincoln Council is part of our commitment to providing the most reliable, interference-free mmWave technology available to the market for Smart City and surveillance system networks,” said Eyal Assa, Siklu’s CEO. INTELLIGENTCIO 7