Buy.com
The growth of the Internet has dramatically changed the way consumers purchase goods. Gone are the limits of traditional business—limited operating hours and confined geographies—replaced by 24 x 7 online businesses serving a large informed audience. Buy.com is the leading Internet superstore, offering a comprehensive selection of brand name items through their ten specialty stores. With the number of shoppers visiting their stores, buy.com needs a platform that drives their e-business by connecting the front-end website to back-end ordering, processing and shipping. With the help of Microsoft® Windows® 2000, buy.com can give their customers the best online experience.
"As we have grown from infancy to adolescence as a business, we are constantly reviewing our technical infrastructure," says Tony McAlister, vice president of Information Services for buy.com. "Buy.com needed a platform that is reliable, scalable and secure while keeping costs down. After an extensive research process, we decided that Windows 2000 was the best option."
99.999 Percent System Uptime Goal
Reliability is key in the realm of eCommerce and Windows 2000 delivers for buy.com. "The beauty of the Internet is that if a product is for sale, you can find it," says Greg Hawkins, CEO and president of buy.com. "If your site is open and reliable, then your customers can count on you to be there. At buy.com, making products available 24 x 7 is our business model."
"We are driving toward a goal of 99.999 percent system uptime, up virtually 100 percent of the time," states McAlister. "Buy.com’s consumers need to be able to come to our store 100 percent of the time." Windows 2000 allowed buy.com to develop an architecture in which they can perform maintenance on some servers while keeping the running site for online visitors. This flexibility will help buy.com achieve their goal.
"We currently have the system architected to 99.99 percent. With Windows 2000, we are hoping to achieve that other nine," says McAllister.
Terminal Services Integrated for Simplified Remote Management
While a third party product was needed for terminal services on Windows NT 4.0®, now they are integrated with the Windows 2000 platform. Windows 2000 allows buy.com’s developers to connect to the network environment, develop code and put it on the servers from any desktop.
"Windows 2000 allows our developers to develop and deploy code on test servers remotely and seamlessly, decreasing the time it takes for us to add new features to our site," says McAlister. "We did not have this ability in our old environment."
Enabling Your Business for The Future of the Internet
"Our decision was focused less on who could run our business today, but on who could partner with us down the road. Windows 2000 is a platform that gives us the tools we need to get our company to where we hope to be someday soon," says Hawkins.
Windows 2000 provides a platform for building and running rich Web applications and solutions. "We use Windows 2000 and other Microsoft products throughout our network," says McAlister. "We use SQL Server on the back end to service our database requests, and we use Windows 2000 on both the front end and back end to host our Web service."
"We are looking to Windows 2000 for performance improvements, increased system availability and maintainability," says Hawkins. "Our customers rely on 24 x 7 access to our superstores. Windows 2000 allows us to deliver on our consumer promise."
For More Information
Buy.com is a leading Internet superstore, offering a comprehensive selection of brand name computer hardware and peripherals, software, books, videos, DVDs, computer games, music and surplus equipment at everyday low prices. Through ten online specialty stores buy.com offers more than 850,000 products in a convenient, intuitive shopping interface that features extensive product information and multi-media presentations. Buy.com’s e-commerce portal, www.buy.com, links all ten specialty stores and is designed to enhance the customer’s online shopping experience 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Learn more about buy.com at their Web site: www.buy.com 
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Microsoft Software Used
Microsoft® Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition
Microsoft SQL ServerTM 7.0
Microsoft Visual Studio® 6.0
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with Internet Information Services 5.0
