IKEA makes a better way Take IKEA, a name synonymous with ready-to-assemble furniture globally. Responding to the pandemic-fueled online shopping frenzy, Barbara Martin Coppola, Chief Digital Of昀椀cer, Ikea Retail says, “Imagine having orders through ecommerce that correspond to a Black Friday every single day. We have more than double the [ecommerce] volume in a very short time.” Thankfully, IKEA had started laying the groundwork for its own digital transformation efforts several years ago, with the help of the Google Cloud team. Firmly a Continuum Competitor, IKEA was able to instantly transform their technology infrastructure, convert closed stores into ful昀椀lment centers, and enable contactless ‘Click & Collect’ services whilst increasing the capacity to manage large web traf昀椀c volumes and online orders. By using Google Cloud, among other key serverless technologies, they achieved within weeks and days things that would normally take years or months. Going forward, the company has a permanent commitment to reinvention using the cloud. “Thanks to cloud, we’re able to have a real data analytics and AI revolution. This is only possible through cloud [because it’s] just not possible, capacity and computing-wise [with on-premise]. That has been a very important evolution into starting to embed algorithms across everything we do.” says Barbara Martin Coppola, Chief Digital Of昀椀cer, Ikea Retail. Ever–ready for every opportunity 20