General Mills Builds E-Commerce Site

General Mills Inc. and Microsoft Corp. build a direct-to-consumer online channel, called Gluten Freely, based on the Windows Azure platform. Designed to help consumers who have Celiac disease or are sensitive to gluten, a protein naturally found in certain grains, the website helps people locate and shop for gluten-free foods and provides diet and health information.

 

“We needed to build an e-commerce solution without incurring the costs and maintenance of a traditional on-premises platform,” says Dom Alcocer, marketing manager at General Mills. “Gluten Freely was brought to market about twice as fast and at about half the cost of what we were expecting from a traditional IT development.”

 

Recognizing the growing importance of meeting the needs of consumers who need to remove gluten from their diet, General Mills began making a range of gluten-free food products beginning with Rice Chex cereal in 2008. The company looked for a focused way to direct its products and information to the public while avoiding the burden of investing in traditional hardware and software IT resources.

 

Using Windows Azure as a platform, General Mills was able to build a direct-to-consumer online channel in the cloud. So far, the company has experienced substantial site traffic, sales, consumer enthusiasm and positive social media feedback, including more than 90,000 Facebook fans.