Re: E-commerce Architecture

Bill,

The decision to outsource your web site or keep in it-house depends on how 
you look at some significant issues.

Pro's to Outsource:
   - Not a distraction
   - Use someone else's expertise to get it done
   - Security / operations is someone else's job
   - Want to get going quickly

Pro's to Keep In-house:
   - Will the web be a core part of your strategy in the future?
   - Easier to link to your existing line of business systems
   - Better consistency of information available (running off of live 
information rather than "downloads" that quickly get out of date)

The classic case to keep the system in-house is that of a metro-NYC area 
retailer with many stores & heavy promotional pricing.  They outsourced 
their web store to a "bargain" web-hosting company.  Their experience was 
that the "prices" on the web site never matched the prices in their ads or 
the store.  The customer satisfaction issues were so great that their 
president ordered that the web store be taken down.  We are working with 
them to ensure that all of their store prices are driven off of the same 
database.

Our company specializes in AS/400 Internet applications within the greater 
New York City region.  One example of our work is the gift shop at 
www.mikasa.com .  It runs on an AS/400 and uses LANSA for the Web.  There 
is no need for the data queues or MQ-series that you refer to in your 
posting.  They are complications that you don't need!  LANSA is able to 
read their existing AS/400 databases without any "strange & unusual 
activities"!

Mikasa made the decision to run the application in house.  They view the 
Internet as being a core part of their future strategy.  You have to look 
to your own company's goals to determine your best course!

Hope this helps!

Sincerely,

John Myers
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 Technical Solutions
Strategic Business Systems, Inc.
300 Lake Street, Suite B, Ramsey, NJ 07446  USA
E-mail: mailto:jmyers@sbsusa.com   Phone: +1 (201) EASY 400
Web:    http://www.sbsusa.com      Fax:   +1 (201) 327-6984

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At 09:19 AM 1/26/00 , you wrote:
>Our plans for e-commerce are to outsource the development and hosting of our
>web site to a third-party firm.  This will allow our inhouse staff to
>concentrate on handling the interface data going to and from the web site,
>and to develop and run the  backend transaction processing on our AS/400's.
>
>My feeling about the transaction processing is that we must make sure that
>they perform well and that we should try to save every possible second,
>otherwise the customer will move on to another web site.  I am considering
>processing the interface data with data queues and using "never-ending" RPG
>IV (ILE) procedures to both modularize the processes and optimize the work.
>We are also looking to use a "canned" product such as MQSeries to handle the
>interface data.
>
>Any feedback (positive and negative!) about this approach would be
>appreciated, since I feel that we must architect our e-commerce application
>correctly.  Any other approaches that might be better would be appreciated
>also.
>
>Thanks,  Bill

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