Home Shopping Network clicks through to Microsoft technology

Home Shopping Network (http://www.hsn.com) has migrated its Web solution from Oracle and Solaris, to Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server. By standardising on the Microsoft and Intel solution, HSN Interactive has improved its ability to deliver new functionality and react quickly to market forces; experienced improved performance; as well as simplifying vendor management, while reducing hardware, software and support costs.

The Home Shopping Network (HSN) sells goods via television 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the US and the company has achieved a steady growth rate and annual sales for 1999 of over $1 billion. Although HSN primarily uses television to sell goods, it is leveraging the Internet through HSN Interactive as a way to attract additional customers, accept orders and provide a high level of customer support - the site delivers up to 750 000 page views per day.

"This is a significant win for Microsoft in the dot.com space and follows our recent announcement that Lycos and Freemarket.com have chosen our technology to power their Web solutions," says Garry Hodgson, Internet development group director at Microsoft South Africa. "We are committed to providing the software platform on which dot.com companies can build their businesses and wins like this indicate that Microsoft technology is widely supported in both local and international markets."

Prior to the newly implemented solution, HSN ran its core business - including inventory, order management and fulfillment - on a series of legacy applications running on a Unisys mainframe. To extend this functionality to the Internet, it relied on a mixed-platform solution consisting of Microsoft, Sun and Oracle technology.

This fragmented environment caused a number of problems for the company. "The mixed solution decreased our agility since it took longer to deliver new functionality in response to changing market requirements," explains Stan Antonuk, director of site operations for HSN Interactive. "We were experiencing performance and availability problems, and it was difficult and time-consuming to fix problems and optimise performance. Having multiple vendors and support organisations added complexity that we didn`t need, and staffing was also more difficult in that we needed to recruit people with expertise in these very different systems."

In May 2000, HSN decided to migrate the Oracle/Sun data tier of its solution to the standardised Microsoft and Intel solution. "When we were presented with the opportunity to migrate to a completely Microsoft and Intel solution, we jumped at it," recalls David Schrader, Manager of Systems Engineering for HSN Interactive. "Our previous mixed environment had presented many challenges that we would not have managed, moving forward."

All necessary development for the migration was completed in only six weeks and in August 2000 the Sun/Oracle data tier was replaced with a cluster of two eight-way Compaq 8500 servers, each populated with four processors, and running Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

"Our decision was made based on a previous relationship with Microsoft that was very strong and very positive," recalls Mitchell. "We were expecting improvements in time-to-market, performance and scalability, as well as better management tools, monitoring functionality, and maintenance capabilities. So far, we haven`t been disappointed. We`ve seen significant benefits in all of these areas."

The new solution has greatly enhanced the company`s ability to respond to changes in the market. "By standardising on the Microsoft and Intel solution, we significantly improved our ability to deliver future improvements and remain competitive," emphasises Mitchell. "The solution`s tightly integrated products and services have enabled us to leverage software that has already been built either by us, Microsoft, or a third party. The return has already been proven to us as we rebuilt our entire Web site from the ground up in under 45 days!"

Adopting a standardised Microsoft and Intel solution has also simplified vendor management for HSN Interactive. "Microsoft is one of the few software companies that offer the breadth of great products addressing most business needs," explains Mitchell. "From the operating system to the Web servers, they have great applications and we`re already looking at the Microsoft .NET platform running on Intel Itanium processor-based servers. Moving forward, my staff only needs to learn one set of fundamentals and one way of doing things, and they will enjoy the consistency of documentation, information sources and training. When we have problems, we have fewer vendors to turn to for support, fewer support structures to be intimately knowledgeable of, and fewer contacts to call and manage relationships with."