The business risk of using servers not engineered for e-commerce

A report by Forrester Research (1999) claims that the average attention span of a customer in Internet time is approximately eight seconds. Furthermore, the report states that 42 percent of the people that leave a site unsatisfied will never return. This can translate into a huge amount of lost revenue for a company that is banking its future on e-commerce.

Meta Group, another research company, points out that using web servers designed specifically for this purpose can speed up transactions and ultimately improve the Internet experience for most users. By improving hardware scalability and reliability, web service providers can rise to the challenges of:

• spiky utilisation

• unforgiving users, wanting a 24x7 experience

• growing requirements for connectivity to vital business processes and systems, such as ERP and logistics

Meta Group recommends "raising the roof" on server deployment, by providing for headroom of at least ten times the predicted normal workload in the Web environment. In addition, Meta recommends server clustering for redundancy, and using multi-processing servers for additional performance.

Intel has risen to the challenge with a new Web server platform offering - the ISP2150. this product offers powerful performance and a flexible growth path in a compact system. Engineered for Service Providers, the thin 2U form factor and new 24" chassis length enables users to stack servers in parallel as required, and can be loaded with up to two Intel Pentium III processors for fast memory, fast storage, and fast network connections.

"Starting from a single processor system, the ISP2150 can easily be upgraded with additional processor, memory and disk capacity," says Ryan Steadman, server product manager at Intel distributor AXiZ. "As your customer base expands and your needs grow, the ISP2150 can be clustered, load balanced, brought on-line quickly and easily managed from a central console."

Unlike proprietary designs, the ISP2150`s open, flexible architecture guarantees customers a wide selection of choices at every level of the solution stack- from hardware components and peripherals, to the most popular operating systems for Internet development, software applications, even development tools.

As a compliment to remote, real-time server management, the ISP2150 features a number of hardware advancements to maximise uptime for your customer. A four-drive, hot-swappable storage subsystem offers robust storage space and data protection with an add-in RAID Controller to reduce server downtime and assure data integrity.

"The Internet is changing the competitive landscape, both for business-to-consumer and business-to-business transactions," says Steadman. "Few customers will accept slow-loading Web pages or sluggish transactions, and surveys prove that those who experience slow performance move quickly to a competitor`s Web site. Why risk this by using a Web server platform that is not equal to the task?"