It’s crucial that companies have a business focus when constructing and running e-commerce sites. Conducting business over the Web isn’t a new paradigm, as some would have you think; it’s just a new way of delivering business services and products.

As companies extend their businesses to the Web and existing e-businesses continue to evolve their Internet initiatives, they must keep their business focus. The dynamic nature of the e-business environment compels companies to ensure high levels of service to their customers, especially because Internet customer loyalty can be fleeting. It’s clear that companies require tools that further their business objectives, rather than merely measuring and monitoring the technology.

Peakstone’s eAssurance product does just that. It allows companies to manage their e-business sites using business objectives that control the technology, in line with those business objectives. Moreover, eAssurance works in cooperation with the technology that many companies already have deployed for their Web sites, such as load-balancing switches and management tools. It collects information from various sources, and uses that information to provide sitewide service assurance.

It begins with setting the company’s business objectives for the Web site. For example, a company can set a business objective to provide their premier customers with a 4-second response time at least 90% of the time, especially when the premier customers are transacting business on the Web site. The eAssurance product will manage the technology, such as load-balancing switches and Web servers, to meet that business objective. During periods of high activity, the response times for the company’s priority customers are maintained, at the expense of users who are just browsing the Web site.

Using this method to prioritize, resources are allocated to provide a higher level of service to the company’s valuable customers, rather than the typical load-balancing algorithms that treat all customers equally. In e-commerce, not all customers are created equal -- some of them are more valuable because they add significantly to your company’s bottom line, while others are just looking.

Another feature of eAssurance is its ability to provide administrators with visibility into the capacity of the Web site. Many companies over-provision their sites out of fear, rather than dealing with site saturation from a position of knowledge. EAssurance provides that knowledge, so administrators know where the potential bottlenecks are and can pro-actively and wisely invest in more technology.

Understanding the saturation point of your current infrastructure, as well as the potential weak links as transaction volume increases, will make your job much easier.

» posted by ITworld staff

Network World

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