Microsoft Cloud Gets $1 Billion Delivery From Domino's

Domino's was an early partner win for Microsoft when the pizza chain said in November that it would put its online pizza-ordering system on the Microsoft cloud. Twenty percent of Domino's pizzas are ordered through the Web, and the company just hit a $1 billion milestone in online sales in February. . . .

But for now, Domino's is still running it on its own servers, waiting for Microsoft to get its security and privacy controls in place. None of the cloud companies is certified by the payment card industry, or PCI, [Domino's Jim] Vitek said. "Because a large percentage of our orders that we receive online requires payment with a credit card, we have to be PCI certified," he said. "Public clouds at this point are not PCI certifiable."

"By leveraging a public cloud, you get the benefit of all the automation Microsoft has put in place. That's economy of scale," said Jim Vitek, director of e-commerce for Domino's. . . . "Our business is very peakish," Vitek said, because people mostly order pizza during mealtimes, and ordering can go crazy at times like Super Bowl Sunday.

"Using a public cloud allows us to scale up around mealtime, and we're only charged for our use of servers in the cloud," Vitek said. "Whereas when we have our own infrastructure, we have to be able to buy enough servers to handle our highest peak."