concrete solutions

São Paulo, February 2011 – Technology has been an strategic asset for
Brazilian retailers, and cloud computing is rapidly growing into the
industries' strategy of choice. Casa & Video, one of the country's top
retail chains, banked on cloud computing and is now reaping the
benefits of a bold project implemented by Concrete Solutions, a global
Brazilian company home to Brazil's leading cloud-computing experts.

Casa & Video needed to streamline its e-commerce infrastructure to
accommodate seasonal cycles and demand hikes affecting their
operations. In practice, the challenge was to set up dynamic
provisioning for their retail portal so that higher demand levels
triggered additional virtual servers.  “In less than 10 minutes we can
double our processing capacity for a normal month, with no seasonal
requirements. All in a secure, swift and easy way”, says Nilson Lopes,
the consultant in charge of transforming Casa & Vídeo's TI
organization.

“Concrete Solutions used an innovative cloud computing solution that
drives dramatic cost savings and significant improvements in terms of
customer service experience. Now, our business' seasonal cyclicality
is matched with dynamic provisioning afforded by our TI structure.
This leads to streamlined use of computer resources, improved
performance, and nearly 100% resource availability”, says Lopes.

“We needed to make our e-commerce operations more efficient. The
solution offered by Concrete was nothing short of perfect, as it led
to dramatic cost savings, improved performance of our website – a
strong advantage over our main competitors – and consequently drove
higher profitability of our online channel by increasing its
effectiveness”, explains Gustavo Batista, Internet Manager at Casa &
Video.

The biggest challenge was to have the portal meet retail industry
demands by offering high availability, shorter response times, and
costs that were consistent with usage levels.  “In other words, the
portal would have to handle high transaction loads in high-sale months
and cost less to operate in those months of normal sales activity.
However, capacity and processing power cannot be stored and for this
reason we went for a radical, robust solution: we got rid of the
physical structure and migrated the whole web portal to the cloud”,
explains Fernando de la Riva, managing partner of Concrete Solutions.

The project's first stage, completed in just one month, involved
migration efforts and certification of the whole new environment.
“Over the last twelve months Casa & Video's daring e-commerce
operations have had almost 100% availability with a response time of
200 m/s, which is about five times better than the industry's leader”,
adds de la Riva. “All this happens in a high availability environment,
backed up by internationally acknowledged security and regulatory
certification such as PCI-DSS and Type 2 SAS-70, SOX and HIPAA”,
concludes the executive.

Currently, Concrete Solutions manages a complete solution for Casa &
Video based on an Amazon AWS (of which CS is a solutions provider),
including 24/7 monitoring, maintenance and support services.


Casa & Video Profile
Casa & Video Rio de Janeiro S.A. (CVRJ) was formed following
ratification of former Casa & Video's court debt restructuring plan.
CVRJ took over retail operations in the State of Rio de Janeiro (64
stores) and also the Internet website.  CVRJ is free and clear of any
contingency or liability of former Casa & Video, being responsible
only for repaying the restructured debt to suppliers and banking
institutions. CVRJ stocks are controlled by a CVM-regulated private
equity fund (PEF). The PEF is formed by investors and creditors that
chose to convert their receivables into fund shares. The Bank of New
York Mellon acts as the fund trustee.

As of November 23, 2009 the operations of former Casa & Video were
wound up and the new business began to operate. On this date, all 64
stores in Rio de Janeiro switched their corporate taxpayers'
registrations to reflect the new ownership. Ernst & Young was hired by
both CVRJ and the PEF as independent auditors and to provide biannual
statements in accordance with the rules applicable to publicly-held
companies (pursuant to CVM regulations applicable to companies
controlled by private equity funds).

The new company is corporate-governance certified, has all of its
accounting practices in compliance with CVM regulations, approved by
BNY Mellon and audited by Ernst & Young. CVRJ also engaged Domingues e
Pinho Contadores and SAP (for their ERP system).

Concrete Solutions Profile
Concrete Solutions is a global IT solutions providers with ten years
of expertise in IT consulting and services and a client base spanning
over 20 countries. The company pioneered development and
implementation of mobile and social media projects using cloud
computing and Agile methods (Scrum) by leveraging their solid
middleware expertise. International customers of Concrete Solutions
include: Johnson Waxes (plants in Mexico, Venezuela, the U.S. and
Argentina); Procter&Gamble (CS supports many operations in countries
such as China, Germany, Egypt, Poland, United States), STC (operates
in Saudi Arabia in alliance with MobileAware); Digicel (Trinidad), in
addition to mobile operators located in Kenya, Morocco and Canada,
including software houses in the U.S., Ireland and Canada.

For media inquiries, please contact:
Tree Comunicação – Concrete Solutions
(11) 3093-3616/ 3093-3604
Josy Alves -  josy@tree.inf.br
Eloisa Rangel - eloisa.rangel@tree.inf.br