The Andersen Consulting e-commerce site,
www.dotcoza.co.za
- launched on the 6 March 2000 - is being hosted on the UUNET SA network.
The project - based on a recent American project - is intended to demonstrate, live, to South African businesses and consumers that e-commerce is a viable option in South Africa today. A person, to be known as dotcoza, will conduct, from his home, all his business and entertainment activities using only the Internet.
Visitors to the website will be able to observe him via live video and audio streaming facilities.
Said Rajey Singh, Andersen Consulting`s technical manager for the dotcoza project: "We went with UUNET SA because, when we approached them, they were very responsive and accommodated our changes at short notice. Also, they were able to supply us with the very considerable bandwidth and other services needed for a site like this."
UUNET SA`s sizeable investment qualifies it to be a platinum sponsor of the project.
UUNET SA`s Justin Colyn said: "We have two reasons for being a sponsor.
"Firstly, we wanted to demonstrate that UUNET SA has the network capacity to handle an e-commerce initiative of this magnitude. Ours is South Africa`s only true third generation network.
"We can supply all possible e-commerce solutions - such as routed services, virtual private networks and managed data network services - off one common, seamless, transparent platform. Customers needn`t be switched from one platform or network to another to get the service they want.
"Secondly, as the first project of its kind on the African continent, dotcoza is vital for South African businesses.
"Dotcoza shows businesses that everything they need to be successful in e-commerce is available right here in this country - experienced consultants, fully enabled network service providers and all the suppliers of such items as security, privacy and e-commerce transactional software.
"At the same time, consumers using the site can see how easy it is to shop on the Internet. So the dotcoza site is, in fact, helping to create an Internet-aware consumer market for South African businesses."
Dotcoza (the person) has a radio frequency transmittor attached to his wrist which triggers cameras in the rooms of his house to switch on. The pictures of what he is doing, as well as the sound, are streamed live, via a 128 kilobyte line to Andersen Consulting`s video streaming server at UUNET SA`s New Doornfontein facility. From there dotcoza visitors access the video stream on a 3 megabit line dedicated to doctcoza visitors.
"Although video streaming uses an enormous amount of bandwidth," says Colyn, "our network can easily handle it. In addition, we have recently upgraded our core network to virtually double our previous capacity and redundancy. That means that if one circuit goes down, we can move all our present traffic, including dotcoza, across to the other one.
UUNET SA is also hosting dotcoza`s web server, Sun MicroSystem`s E250 server on a UNIX/Informix platform, at New Doornfontien. The web server is linked to the streaming machine.
A 64 kilobyte line, used by dotcoza from the house for his own Internet surfing activities, goes straight from the dotcoza house to UUNET SA`s New Doornfontein facility.
Visit the dotcoza website at http//:www.dotcoza.co.za
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UUNET SA
UUNET SA is South Africa`s leading Internet based network service provider. A joint venture between Datatec and UUNET Technologies, the company provides Internet connectivity and corporate network services to major corporations as well as access services to Internet Service Providers such as M-Web.
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Datatec is a technology and services company focusing on corporate networking and the Internet. UUNET, the Internet services division of MCI WorldCom, is a global leader in Internet communications solutions offering a comprehensive range of Internet services to business customers world-wide.
Visit the UUNET SA website on www.uunet.co.za