Asp web site hosting

ASP is a good fit for Puma's Web site

Application service providers are best known for handling hulking enterprise applications such as PeopleSoft human resources packages or Oracle financials. However, a less-prominent part of the ASP portfolio - e-commerce software - may deserve increased attention by network executives.

That's what sports retailer Puma concluded when it set about revving up its online store.

Puma, based in Germany with North American headquarters in Westford, Mass., opened its Internet storefront in early 2000. The company used an outside developer to design and launch its e-commerce site, but last fall realized it was outgrowing its humble beginnings.

"Our traffic had increased exponentially," says Peter Kim, a marketing manager for Puma. "During the course of [2001 ] we had tripled our business, and since this year began we've doubled from there. The current store was creaking under the load. I don't think it was designed to handle the traffic we were getting."

Personalization sought too

Kim also says the existing store, which offers 300 styles of shoes and 600 styles of sports apparel and gets about 194,000 unique visitors per month,didn't have the personalization features that had become standard in online commerce.

"We wanted to do more with personalization, things like letting customers store information and get recommendations online," he says.

Puma decided to scrap its Web development consultants and use Microsoft's Commerce Server 2000 as the foundation "We decided we didn't want to incur the for an updated Web site. Company offi- costs of bringing on a bunch of develop-- cials then debated whether to bring the ers, [database administrators], e-comwhole thing in-house.

"We decided we didn't want to incur the cost of bringing on a bunch of developers, [database administrators], e-commerce specialists and that kind of thing," Kim says. "We decided we would get more value for our dollars by using someone else's expertise."

So Puma went the ASP route, investigating a number of providers - which Kim declined to name - before settling on Surebridge.

Kim cautions that the ASP market, which has seen several high-profile failures, remains on shaky ground. He says Puma was particularly concerned with the financial stability and viability of the ASPs, and conducted intense financial reviews before choosing Surebridge.

A privately held company Surebridge does not disclose financial information but claims its customer base increased 96% in 2001 and that its revenue continues to rise.

Another plus for Surebridge, Kim says, is that it also provides the professional services Puma was looking for to take charge of enhancing the Web site with the new Commerce Server functionality.

"Surebridge got up to speed really quickly on the situation with the Web site.They picked up the pieces where our other vendor left off and had a really good understanding of what needed to be done," he says.

In addition to hosting Commerce Server, Surebridge also is managing the Microsoft SQL Server database that stores information and content for the e-commerce site.

"They're hosting the entire presence, as well as developing it," Kim says."They're really managing the whole thing."

While Puma still will handle the front-end design work, it has given all the back-end management responsibilities to Surebridge. Surebridge is working out the kinks, and Kim expects the site to go live in a few weeks.

When a Web surfer makes a purchase at Puma's site, that person enters personal information and credit card information, which will be sent via Secure Sockets Layer to Surebridge.VeriSign then checks the validity of the information. Meanwhile, Commerce Server checks for inventory availability, which is updated every half hour from Puma's in-house inventory-management system via an electronic data interchange system.

Orders are then sent to Puma's inventory management system, which directs the order to be fulfilled and sends an electronic invoice via EDI back to the Surebridge-hosted system for confirmation and to be stored in the user's account history. The information then is dropped into Puma's in-house SAP accounting system.

"We made a strategic decision to operate the online store like any other [independent Puma retailer], Kim says. "The decision was made not to integrate it fully into SAP and other back-end systems... It drops orders like it's another Puma customer."

Kim could not say how much he thinks Puma will save by using an ASP but expects the return on investment to be significant.

"In terms of the hassle factor, we're definitely saving a lot, Kim says."The best way to put it is it's more of an income statement, rather than a balance sheet type of decision. Rather than bringing on fixed costs for hiring people and having a lot of assets both in people, software and hardware, it's better for us to use an application outsourcer and keep those expenses separate. If we need to ramp up, for example, it will be a lot easier to double the capacity of our store and have twice the number of people working on it from the Surebridge end, rather than us having to go out and hire more developers."