InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

App Servers Branch Out

Denise Ganino is the sole proprietor of Cookingstore.com, a specialty cookware retail site in Sonora, Calif. Until recently, she ran a brick-and-mortar shop called Sonora Culinary Supply. When she first went online, Ganino--who is decidedly nontechnical--relied on her Internet service provider and hosting service to handle site design and content modifications. But this quickly became impractical, as her online business grew and required more attention. So she gave Encanto's turnkey solution a try. "When I was using the hosting service, I was getting charged for all the changes I was making," she says. "Now, I can do everything myself."

That ability to add and delete items quickly, run short-term special offers, and make other modifications to her retailing site helped Ganino build a strong online customer base. In fact, she shut down her store in February to focus exclusively on her online business. "Now I have a store that's open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it takes a lot less effort than keeping my regular store open did," she says.

Adam Chilvers, president of Wine Country Inc., a brick-and-mortar and online retailer in Winter Park, Fla., had a similar online experience. "We put up a half-baked site in November of 1998, and the response was just amazing--even without any advertising or promotion," the 25-year-old entrepreneur says. "So we quickly decided to put more effort into the Web side of the business."

Like Ganino, Chilvers used outside help to create and configure his site, which in his case is still hosted at a service provider's facility. Chilvers also values the way his IBM/Lotus Domino server manages the content directly. "We don't have to call someone every time we want to change something," he says.

Low Cost, High Profit
Chilvers points out that his online business is profitable, unlike some dot-coms in the wine business that have made huge investments in Web infrastructure that have not paid off. "All the stuff that those guys do on their sites may be nice, but I'm not sure it's worth a million dollars," he says. "The way we're doing things, we can grow at a natural pace, make money, and not have any of that pressure."

Chilvers has a point. Jumping in for technology's sake never made sense--and it still doesn't. But as Web content and apps become increasingly important, fewer companies are going to be satisfied with the kind of undifferentiated sites that can be built using some vendor's prefabricated templates and components.

As those same companies begin to craft more sophisticated E-business partnerships, they'll also need tools that can effectively manage increasingly complex exchanges of data over the Net. Web-server vendors are well-positioned to join the ranks of IT's most strategic suppliers--but they have to keep delivering solutions that help E-commerce sites branch out beyond the enterprise.

Lenny Liebmann is an IT consultant and writer in Highlands, N.J. He can be reached at ll@exit109.com.

return to page 1, 2, 3