InformationWeek

September 7, 1998

IT Makes Commodities Hot

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Chrapaty says E*Trade wants to create an environment that is the antithesis of a commodity. "We are creating a destination Web site where people come and stay for half an hour at a time. They don't pop in, make a trade, and leave," she says. The E*Trade Web site includes research, quotes, a course about trading, and a suite of personalized value-added products and services, including portfolio tracking, Java-based charting and quote applications, real-time market commentary and analysis, news, and more.

E*Trade was the first brokerage that let customers conduct trades using voice-recognition technology; in May, E*Trade added the capability to apply for loans over the Web; and this month, E*Trade will let consumers apply for insurance online.

E*Trade's network architecture also ensures that the company offers customers a reliable product-crucial in an area in which lost network time can literally cost customers money. E*Trade has three fully redundant operations centers that can seamlessly back each other up if one goes down. To keep the network up, E*Trade does session management across multiple servers and is fault tolerant at the application and transaction layer.

Whether through industry deregulation, as in the utilities and telecom industries, or through the growing awareness of senior business executives to the value of IT, commodities producers are beginning to catch up with other industries in the use of object-oriented technology, ERP, data warehousing, customer-relationship management, and the Web. But the competitive edge IT can deliver is short-lived, as competitors apply the same technologies. Keeping at least one step ahead requires a highly flexible attitude among IT professionals.

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