From Power on to Power Up

摘要

Online shoppers rang up a record mass of purchases this past holiday season (yes, again-$18.5 billion worth, according to one recent survey), and all appeared to proceed without any big, embarrassing Web-site crashes. This online holiday nonevent raises a question about Web technology, though: Without the threat of a public outage, has doing business on the Web become business as usual? Don't bet on it. Some companies continue lavishing attention on their Web sites, whether it's improving alization, cutting costs from bloated operations, or applying the lessons of E-retail Christmases past. It's a learning process sure to serve up new, sometimes harsh lessons. "Everyone went through it the first time with their initial E-commerce sites," says Chris Dudley, an operating VP for software development at Federated Department Stores Inc., which owns Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and five other retailers. "But there are going to be other aspects where we get caught from a performance perspective." Federated is using know-how from its Macys.com and Bloomingdales.com shopping sites to design a Web portal for employees to manage $1 billion in annual ad spending. Microsoft is pouring money into its flagship site to keep up with employees and customers who insist on ever-increasing depth of interaction. Cigna Corp. is striving to slash a quarter of its Web-site server budget. These and other companies show why the Web will be anything but boring in 2004.