WebSphere Revolution

So the Internet Division began to experiment with some software (eventually named Net.Commerce) developed at the IBM Toronto lab for use by the 1996 Olympic Ticket Server. At the time, the Olympic Ticket Server was the largest commercial Website on the Internet—and it was a big success for IBM. Armed with this experience and what they had learned through other commerce experiments, IBM began to focus on selling the Net.Commerce software to help customers build their own B2B and B2C e-commerce Websites. L. L. Bean, a leading retailer of quality outdoor gear and apparel, was the first Net.Commerce customer. its electronic catalog on an IBM Net.Commerce system. The llbean.com Website quickly became one of the top-rated e-commerce sites in the industry. The site has won numerous awards and accolades over the years, such as Best Catalog Website, Internet Retailer’s Best of the Web, Forrester’s Best of Web Design, Web Marketing Association Standard of Excellence, MITX Awards for Best User Experience and Best Consumer Goods Experience, among others. Today, the Website is L. L. Bean’s biggest single sales channel. Another ground-breaking Net.Commerce customer was Victoria’s Secret®—a popular retail outlet for women’s wear, lingerie, and beauty products. Net.Commerce was the foundation of its e-commerce Website back in 2000 when it decided to hold a major fashion show on the Internet and at New York’s Time Square for Valentine’s Day. The promotional effort for the fashion show was extraordinary and the IBM team was nervous how much traffic would be driven to its Website during the fashion show? This would be a defining moment for IBM who had to make sure they had an incredibly scalable Website infrastructure to support the event. As it turned out, the fashion show was a great success, generating over 1.5 million viewers and up to a million hits per hour on the Victoria’s Secret Website. Today that’s no big deal, but back then, it was “off the charts.” The success of Net.Commerce with L. L. Bean and Victoria’s Secret showed IBM that it was time to move Net.Commerce past the experimental software stage. So the IBM Software More on the Web • Original Net.Commerce Announcement (9/21/98) • WebSphere Commerce Today on IBM.com Based in Freeport, Maine, L. L. Bean had been in business for 84 years. They launched a Website in 1995 to provide outdoor enthusiasts with a wealth of valuable information. You could get all the information you needed to research and plan trips to state and national parks, plan cross country skiing trips, and learn about wilderness first aid. You could also communicate with customer service but you couldn’t place an order on their Website. For that you had to make a phone call. Now L. L. Bean wanted to add the ability to take orders from its customers over its Website and IBM was ready to put Net.Commerce to the task. Work began and by the end of 1996, L. L. Bean had launched the online ordering capability for its Website and become the first catalog retailer to create “Technology by itself is not interesting it doesn’t pay the bills it doesn’t actually do anything to move the value proposition forward I hope we always retain that relationship back to business value.” —Rob High, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for the SOA Foundation 2000 Net.Commerce becomes WebSphere Commerce Suite. 2000 The NEAR spacecraft becomes the first to orbit an asteroid. 27 http://llbean.com http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/2453.wss http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/2453.wss http://www-306.ibm.com/software/genservers/commerceproductline/ http://www-306.ibm.com/software/genservers/commerceproductline/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of WebSphere Revolution

WebSphere Revolution Table of Contents The Rise of Internet Business WebSphere Takes the Stage WebSphere Application Server Evolves Beyond the Application Server WebSphere and On Demand Business New Flexibility through SOA An Eye Toward the Future

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