Reel.com

Reel.com has become an indispensable tool for movie consumers to make moviegoing, buying and renting decisions thanks to its movie news and reviews, and informative content on nearly every movie ever made. The company's long-term vision is to deliver movie content directly to the end user, on demand, via electronic video distribution. Reel.com needed a platform to support its services today and their future offerings. Reel.com chose Windows 2000 for its reliability, scalability and ease of deployment.

Increased Reliability

"One of the key features we hope to get out of Windows 2000 is reliability," says Dave Rochlin, chief operating officer. "From the consumer’s perspective, we are expected to be up and running 24 x 7 with minimal downtime. Internally at Reel.com, we expect Windows 2000 to reduce the resources we need to allocate to ensure we are up and running on a 24 x 7 basis."

Reel.com attributes increased reliability partly to the improvements in Windows 2000 Server Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0. System administrators and the development staff are experiencing fewer server alerts and a reduction of server reboots. "You will find in the dot com world, it is truly essential to have that high level of reliability that Windows 2000 gives us," stated Keith Osborne, chief information officer.

Smooth as Silk

"As a fast growing Internet company, we have numerous development projects going on at any given time. Resources are at a premium. We saw through the initial deployment of Windows 2000, we were able to get it done very quickly, with minimal disruption to the organization," says Rochlin.

Windows 2000 provides management tools that allowed Reel.com to build and deploy servers faster and centralize control.

"The transition and deployment was very smooth, as we deployed Windows 2000 over the holidays, a number of the engineers came to me and said that the upgrade was as smooth as silk," says Osborne.

Internet Enable Your Business

Windows 2000 allows Reel.com to host more users and content per server with IIS 5.0 and the Active Directory™ service; realize higher performance via increased throughput and increased bandwidth utilization; and utilize flexible authentication options like Kerberos and X.500 standards. Windows 2000 integrated web application services also aided Reel.com in their initial deployment.

"Reel.com is very pleased with the newer tools, including the Visual Studio® 6 development system, Active Directory, Kerberos integration, X.500 Standards, XML, and the encapsulation of MGS and Microsoft Message Queue Services (MSMQ) within the Windows 2000 COM structure is a wonderful thing for us, given our highly transactional nature," says Osborne.

With Windows 2000, Reel.com delivers the online movie experience their customers expect.

For More Information

Reel.com, Inc. is the ultimate resource for film lovers. Through their site they provide consumers with a wide variety of entertaining film-related information to make educated decisions when selecting a movie. Reel.com also provides an easy and secure way to purchase a broad range of films online and is the leading movies-only retailer on the Internet.

Learn more about Reel.com at the Reel.com Web site .

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Microsoft Software Used

Microsoft® BackOffice® Server
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Windows NT® Server with Internet Information Server 4.0 and Microsoft Transaction Server 2.0
Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition
Microsoft SQL Server™ 7.0
Microsoft Visual Studio® 6.0
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with Internet Information Services 5.0