Greenfingers.com, a UK-based gardening portal, has blossomed since the implementation of a Microsoft-based solution developed by South African e-services company Aqua Online. Having gone live at the end of March 2000 after only five months of design and development, there are currently thousands of plant species listed on the site.
There are over 2.5 million Internet shoppers in the UK today and half the population are active gardeners. As a result, scalability is a key technology requirement for the site as it grows. Aqua Online used Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition, Microsoft NT Server 4.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 to ensure that the site can scale to meet the expected traffic.
The Microsoft-based servers that power the site were built by Aqua Online in Johannesburg and then shipped to the UK where they are hosted by an ISP. To accommodate the anticipated growth while ensuring that content is delivered speedily, the server clusters are split between content and member data to handle traffic volumes. Load balancing at the front-end builds in redundancy and delivers the content, while at the back-end, replication of the Microsoft-based servers add power and speed, while focusing on procurement and order tracking.
As gardening is an information-intensive industry, the maintenance of an updated catalogue of plants, tools, gardening information and mapped directions to available nurseries is a high priority for Greenfingers.com. By customising Microsoft Site Server 3.0 search tools, various search options are available for both advanced users, as well as for those who prefer to use simple terms to describe gardening queries.
Another requirement key to the success of the site is continuous availability. Paul White, chief technology officer at Greenfingers.com explains: "Being a dot.com, if our site goes down, we lose business. As such, redundancy is a key requirement of our IT system. Aqua Online has developed software tools that empower us to be totally self-sustained following the deployment."
Further site personalisation being planned includes news and weather updates, online gardening forums and opinion polls. Bulletin boards and added functionality to the advanced search function are planned shortly and Greenfingers.com is evaluating an upgrade to the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server platform. "As a total solution outsource partner, Aqua Online has supplied a commerce solution which meets and exceeds our needs, while Microsoft has provided the software infrastructure which ensures the future success of our business," says White.
"When we build an electronic commerce site, one of our main goals is to provide transactive content - information which will lead to an online sale," says Brent Shahim, managing director for Aqua Online South Africa. "By using the Microsoft technology platform to build the portal for Greenfingers.com, we have been able to develop a solution that suits both its content and commerce requirements, while solution administration is lowered through its ease-of-use. This leaves Greenfingers to take care of running the business, while the technology takes care of the rest, with minimal human intervention."
In addition to developing the site architecture, Aqua Online developed a relationship management tool which tracks updates of customer interaction, so that Greenfingers.com is constantly aware of customer needs and purchasing trends. To provide efficient service response to customer queries, Aqua Online manages the multi-lingual call centre in the UK and fields all customer calls and e-mails.
"As one of the first locally-developed business-to-consumer portals on Microsoft Site Server 3.0 for an international customer, Greenfingers demonstrates the excellent development skills available in South Africa," says Mark Berman, principal technology strategist in the Dot.Com group at Microsoft South Africa. "The power of the Internet is in the barriers it shatters - enabling local companies to compete globally, while giving dot.coms the ability to take on new markets."
@EditorNote = Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software - any time any place and on any device. Microsoft South Africa was launched in January 1993 in Johannesburg and has sales offices in Durban and Cape Town.
If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft South Africa, please visit the Microsoft Web page at www.microsoft.com, the Microsoft South Africa home page at http://www.microsoft.com/southafrica/ or the IT Web Website at http://www.itweb.co.za, South Africa`s only daily online source of information and technology news.
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