Pandesic
The growth of the Internet has dramatically changed the way companies do business. Gone are the limits of traditional business—limited operating hours and confined geographies—replaced by 24 x 7 business serving a large, decentralized customer base. To take advantage of this momentous time, businesses need far more than a Web page that can accept an order. They need, instead, an engine that drives their e-business by connecting the front-end Web site to the back end of ordering, processing and shipping. With the help of Microsoft® Windows® 2000, Pandesic has become that engine.
Reliable & Scalable
Pandesic provides an end-to-end e-business solution with the control and infrastructure necessary to build and scale a successful e-business. Pandesic's customers demand and receive the most reliable platform on which to host their businesses.
"All of our engineers and developers are excited about Windows 2000; we run over 100 e-businesses today," says Patrick Holmes, chief technologist at Pandesic. "Some of those e-businesses have over 20 Web servers, and it is important for us to have a very truly reliable platform. We have seen excellent reliability with Windows 2000 and Microsoft SQL ServerTM 7.0."
Reliability is critical to online companies. "Our customers look to Pandesic to keep their systems up and running 24 x 7, to ensure that their customers online experience is as good as possible, and we have seen remarkable improvements in system availability moving from Windows NT® 4.0 to Windows 2000," states Pete Wolcott, president of Pandesic.
Manageable
To take full advantage of the new management features of Windows 2000, Pandesic upgraded in a two-phase deployment. "In the first phase, we upgraded the production systems to Windows 2000 to take advantage of the increased scalability and reliability," says Holmes. "In the second phase, we are starting to take advantage of the new features like Network Load Balancing, Windows Installer, Terminal Server and Windows Management Instrumentation."
Pandesic currently develops COM components in both Visual Basic® and Visual C++® development systems. In Visual C++, they use the ActiveX® Template Library and the Standard Template Library. Because developing C++ components using those technologies is so complex, Pandesic is really looking forward to Windows 2000. "We expect COM+ with Windows 2000 to make it significantly easier for us to develop and manage stable COM components," says Holmes.
Empowering Your Customers
As one of the first companies to provide outsourced e-business technologies, customers like DVD Express, the San Francisco Giants, Artist Direct and OshKosh B’Gosh expect Pandesic to provide them with best platform possible. "Businesses going online are really between a rock and hard-place. The market, without question, rewards time to market. But the market is brutal to companies that are ill-prepared for success online," says Wolcott. "Microsoft’s platform helps Pandesic maintain that scalability. We can get customers online quickly and we don't leave them; we keep them going and make sure we can support their success."
"At the end of the day, our customers make us accountable for providing an environment to run their business. It takes more than just cool technologies. We selected Windows 2000 because we found the best price/performance ratio, especially considering total cost of ownership," says Holmes.
"We are looking to Windows 2000 for performance improvements, increased system availability and maintainability," says Wolcott. "Our customers demand 24 x 7 access to data, and they want their customers’ experience to be outstanding. Windows 2000 helps us take a step in that direction."
For More Information
Pandesic, founded in 1997 as a joint venture between Intel and SAP, provides e-business solutions that deliver the control and infrastructure necessary to build and scale a successful e-business.
Pandesic customers receive storefront development tools, transaction-processing capabilities, proven back-end business processes, hardware, bandwidth, security, and ongoing support.
Learn more about Pandesic at the Pandesic Web site 
.
For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information via the World Wide Web, go to http://www.microsoft.com/.
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
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
