Faced with a strategic restructuring and a tight deadline to maintain its IT infrastructure, Boardriders rebuilt its IT environment on Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on AWS. The result: a resilient, transparent, and high-performance IT infrastructure that prioritizes the continuity of retail operations across Europe.
Boardriders is a leading international sportswear and lifestyle group that designs, manufactures, and distributes iconic brands of clothing, footwear, and accessories. Its globally recognized brands, which include Billabong, Quiksilver, Roxy, DC Shoes, RVCA, Element, Von Zipper, and Kustom, embody a casual, outdoor-oriented lifestyle. In Europe, the organization operates around 80 stores within an ecosystem combining company-owned stores, franchise locations, and department store corners. Its highly retail-focused IT system must handle sustained logistics flows, manage omnichannel orders, and operate with warehouses in real time.
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The acquisition of Boardriders France in June 2024 by the Beaumanoir Group radically reshaped the organization of the sportswear and lifestyle specialist’s IT infrastructure. This transition involved the closure of the U.S. data center, which still hosted a large portion of the group’s applications. With the site scheduled for handover and demolition work already planned, the teams had a very short migration window. In the rush, a migration to VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS was initiated. However, just days before going live, Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware disrupted licensing terms and complicated the contracting process.
The IT system displayed a message informing users that the licenses would expire in two weeks, with no fallback solution and the risk of an immediate interruption of operations. Uncontrolled downtime would have impacted stores, deliveries, and contractual commitments, particularly with Amazon. An alternative solution was needed to ensure the stability of the IT system, preserve all existing interfaces, and ensure the uninterrupted operation of retail workflows. Business Intelligence (BI) was also a critical concern, as the dashboards used by the CEO had to be available every morning at 8am without exception.
“What convinced our management to switch to Nutanix was the overall value proposition. It gives us greater resilience, security, and scalability, while significantly reducing our costs. The migration turned out to be a real game-changer for the company.” Philippe Bazerbe, IT Tech Director, Boardriders
To secure its cloud journey and regain visibility, Boardriders chose to refocus its project on Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on AWS. The goal was clear: to rapidly rebuild a consistent, controlled, and resilient environment capable of handling business workloads without imposing disruptive changes on the IT infrastructure.
Over the course of a single weekend, Boardriders’ entire IT environment was migrated to NC2, while maintaining fully ISO-compliant operations. IP addresses, internal interfaces, data exchanges between the SAP database, middleware, and data warehouses, as well as e-commerce workflows, remained unchanged. This approach ensured business continuity, which is essential in a retail environment driven by deliveries, restocking, and omnichannel orders. The migration involved a 48-hour global cutover, including an 8-hour production downtime. Despite these constraints, the entire backlog was processed within two hours, making the operation virtually invisible to the business teams.
Support from the Nutanix and Skill Partner teams played a key role. In addition to the technical implementation, workshops and discussions with the support teams enabled employees to effectively strengthen their knowledge and command of the platform. During the migration of a SQL database exceeding 10 TB used for executive reporting, a performance drop was resolved within a few hours thanks to the expertise of the Nutanix and Skill Partner teams, ensuring compliance with daily internal management requirements.
“We knew the migration would have to be fast, controlled, and have no impact on retail operations. Nutanix worked closely with us, providing both technical expertise and support. Whenever an issue arose, we had a solution within a few hours, which reassured our staff and management.” Philippe Bazerbe, IT Tech Director, Boardriders
Boardriders’ IT infrastructure now runs on a 6-node NC2 cluster, providing the resilience Boardriders needed for its operations. The organization now enjoys enhanced service continuity, reliability, and robustness. Beyond the technical benefits, this transformation has helped Boardriders better control its operational costs, stabilize its cloud roadmap, and improve performance in BI, middleware, and real-time data streams.
Nutanix’s highly responsive support played a decisive role in ensuring the success of this transition. The speed of incident resolution and continuous improvement recommendations helped build confidence among the technical teams and senior management.
Boardriders is now embarking on the next phase of its transformation: the complete unification of its administration via Prism Central and the phased retirement of VMware from its on-premises environments. These changes aim to create a simple, consistent hybrid foundation spanning AWS and on-premises environments—and potentially other clouds—with the flexibility to adjust workloads based on business needs, costs, or platform availability.
Upcoming projects include the SAP upgrade, the modernization of interfaces between BI, middleware, and back-office systems, the implementation of the new Apache NiFi real-time middleware, and the streamlining of identities in line with Beaumanoir Group practices. Within two years, Boardriders aims for an agile, centrally managed IT infrastructure that can leverage multi-cloud capabilities and is built on a Nutanix foundation supporting all of its retail operations.