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Which E-Commerce System Will Fail This Season?
Esther Schindler writes "Every year, there's some retailer whose e-commerce or supply chain fails. And it's a big deal, since the holiday shopping season can make or break their year. The IT challenge encompasses everything from server scalability to supply chain management to search engine optimization to database cajoling to business integration to... well, come to think of it, just about everything. To explore this, CIO.com has a big package of articles examining "Black Friday" and its implications, entitled E-Commerce and Supply Chain Systems Gird for Black Friday. Topics covered include online shopping and holiday IT failures. Despite all this—and at least ten years of industry experience in e-commerce sales—we all just know that someone will make yet another big mistake. I wonder who it'll be this year?"
Gartner has a nice looking curve they use for technology take-up, looks like kind of a dampened sine wave.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Ok, I have skimmed TFA. Near as I can tell half of the examples don't really have much to do with e-commerce. Planes canceled by weather? That really has little to do with the 'net. Short stock in stores? Again, that's just good or bad luck or planning, not something that really is related to e-commerce. And mistakes that go back to 1999 really aren't that relevant - that' s ancient history in terms of e-commerce.
Really, this article has only a tenuous link to e-commerce.
Three Squirrels
Elves: We are free and fairly sober with so many toys to build. The machines are kind of tricky, probably someone will be killed. But we gladly work for nothing
Fry: Which is good because we don't intend to pay
All: The elves are back to work today
Elves: Hooray! We have just a couple hours to make several billion gifts. And the labor isn't easy
Leela: When you all work triple shifts! You can make the job go quicker if you turn up the controls to super speed
All: It's back to work on X-mas eve...hooray
Leela: And though you're cold and sore and ugly your pride will mask the pain
Fry: Let my happy smile warm your hearts
Elf: There's a toy lodged in my brain!
Elves: We are getting awfully tired and we can't work any faster and we're very very sorry
Bender: Why you selfish little bastards! Do you want the kids to think that Santa's just a crummy empty handed jerk? Then shut your yaps and back to work!
Elves: Now it's very nearly X-mas and we've done the best we could
Fry: These toy soldiers are poorly painted
Leela: And they're made from inferior wood
Bender: I should give you all a beating but I really have to fly
Santabot: If I weren't stuck here frozen I'd harpoon you in the eye!
Elves: Now it's back into our tenements to drown ourselves in rye
Leela: You did the best you could, I guess, and some of these gorillas are ok
Elves: Hooray! We're adequate!
All: The elves are resting X-mas day, hooray!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
November 2006: Amazon.com
/.-style hit, but I didn't figure that a company as big as Amazon would have any problems handling that load in this day and age. I guess I was wrong.
Amazon's "customers choose" promotion/vote resulted in a limited number of XBOX 360 Core systems (then retailing for $300) being put on sale for $100 on Black Friday.
It brought Amazon to its knees. Loading individual pages, even those unrelated to the XBox, took over three minutes in some cases. I'm sure the XBox was meant as a simple loss-leader like most other Black Friday promotions, but the "sale" resulted in an extreme difficulty purchasing anything from Amazon for the two to three hours after the sale price went active. Ultimately, I'm sure a lucky few got the XBox, but I doubt they bought anything else. As for the rest of us, it was a pain to buy anything else even if we wanted to.
The saddest part was that this was 2006, not 1999. I knew it would be the equivalent of a
A few weeks later, some proposed that Amazon used it as a test-bed for their hosting/load leveling service that they unveiled a little later, so it's possible that the promotion was worth it to them if that was the case. Outside of that possibility, though, I can't believe CIO.com left this example out.
If you have such a system, you best be monitoring it at a minimum. Nagios and Groundwork come to mind.
that Walmart's website will go down again due to high traffic on Black Friday. It'll be interesting to see how other companies, like Target, will do on that day as well. Something also is making me want to think that Best Buy will not perform to the same levels (time- and price-adjusted) as they used to, probably due to the credit crunch and that the Average Joe should be less inclined to make a moderate-large luxury purchase (e.g. 60" TV being moderate) this year compared to last.
But in all likelyhood, I'm guessing that the people who are going to be shopping less this year are going to be the lowest-lower income families, since a larger portion of their income is going to be spent on interest rates because they got taken advantage of with the adjustable-rate mortages and Home Equity Lines of Credit. So I'm expecting that people in the lower-middle to middle income families will shop at places like Kohls and Target rather than Macy's/Marshal Fields/Dayton's, while upper-income stores like Tiffany's will have another phenominal season.
Any of them running on Vista... I can only imagine the headaches having to have someone in front of the server:
USER29843 is sending their order information via the web... [CANCEL]/[ALLOW]?
USER29843 is trying to pay by credit card... [CANCEL]/[ALLOW]?
.
Moderator Tip: Mod +1 FUNNY
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Folks:
For the past fifteen years, I have not done any Christmas shopping. I have been making my family's gifts instead of fighting the mall crowds.
My only shopping is for raw materials and I do that in the summer and fall, when e-commerce is not under stress; or the places I go to don't really need it. (Goodwill stores for used fabric, the bike shop for used metal parts, or the dumpster for any scrap metal or fabrics.
The only 'e' in my Christmas is the electronics in my sewing machine or TIG welder!
Beyond saving me the frustration of shopping, making my own gifts adds a personal touch to my Christmas giving; this is the way it was done in the old days. We all used to make something for each other.
There is something lacking about shopping for a gift on line and having it shipped directly to the recipient. There is no personal, human contact between the bearer and the receiver of the gift.
Home made gifts have the ultimate in human, personal contact between me and those whom I grace with my home made creations.
If you want to see what the imagination of a 55 year old man who spends all his spare time being creative can create, go to www.clearplastic.com
Peace
Cleara
It gets about as much traffic as slashdot per quantcast.com. It got killed this week, multiple times. And it uses Windows Server 2003. When it does the Bag of Crap for $1 it takes hours to come back.
Load balancing is totally f ed over there.
The much busier refurbdepot.com is sturdier.
Farther down the posts somebody got tagged as a troll for mocking Vista as a server, but it's so true.
Props to you and I understand your angle about gift giving and thought. I've thought about giving my wife something that I'd spend a lot of time and effort on that I know she really needs and would enjoy having done for her. She has wanted this for at least 8 months now and has been asking very often, she even seemed a little frustrated when she did not have it when her parents came to stay for the week either so I know she is serious about it.. It would be with my own hands and tools and probably take me almost all day so I think it will be very special thing to give her during the holidays, you have given me inspiration, I've finally decided to go ahead and do this for her. I'm going to clean the gutters on the house!! Boy will she be happy. I could pay someone to do it but like you said, that would not be the same.
On that note.. If you can make something with a screen size of about 50 inches that I can watch NFL games in HD quality on, I'll consider buying it from you.
To explore this, CIO.com has a big package of articles examining "Black Friday" and its implications
Wouldn't that be preaching to the choir? I would hope CIOs already have the experience and background to know the problems and implications...especially if they're CIO for any sort of decent-sized online and/or brick-and-mortar retailer...
Please help metamoderate.
Thank God you're not making mine.
After we all reply, the answers will be put together and called Schindler's List?
i mean seriously who freaking cares who screws up bad this year, jesus this is almost like watching a crappy reality TV show people watch merely to see others completely destroy their own lives.
What if they dont want crazy hippie lighted clothing? =)
you can't ack before you balls.. you just
Does buying stuff make you happy? You're just a consumer?
Deleted
Or the Communists, or something, I forget.
;)
To explore this, CIO.com has a big package of articles examining "Black Friday" and its implications. I see no big package of articles - I find almost content free fluff. There is nothing of substance here. The only failure I see this year is CIO.com turning out worthless copy.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
No, it's not the holiday shopping season (whatever the hell that even means) that can make or break a retailer's year. Christmas is what makes or breaks a retailer's year. When did we forget that? Retailers still use Christmas music and props along with Santa Claus in their commercials but why they refuse to reference Christmas by name when they make billions off it is beyond me. Give credit where credit is due.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Last 4 days (and currently) they intermittently take people's money but don't notify the ecommerce site. Oops.
Was trying to browse the site friday morning (round 10am CST) and it was down (out of connections), when I did get in it was barely responsive. Wonder what they are running it on ?
Don't let it be the one I'm supporting for the first time this year.
Wow! Those colors taste like music!
While E-Commerce sites will take a beating, physical stores do as well. I worked at a major department store for four years. Without fail, every Black Friday the whole system would crash. This would mean no credit cards, no checks, and no prices on merchandise.
-Nicole
The U.S. Postal Service is systematically destroying all packages sent to other countries. This has happened to me twice in the last week. The packages are returned to the senders in the destoyed condition like a warning. Once this gets out it will cause consumers to stop all online buying. The communists win!
Whichever store has the most unbelievable discount on the most desired item (a wii for 99 bucks or something like that) will crash first.
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This why it comes handy to pay good salaries to retain the best test engineers who can do capacity planing and load testing.
Thanks to Wikipedia I now know that Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season in the United States. Thank you, Wikipedia
-- Make America hate again!