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Hewlett-Packard today unveiled a system for sites selling goods and services that it says offers a level of service above and beyond standard Web surfing.
"It's almost like opening a new line at the supermarket," said Gina Cassinelli, marketing manager for Hewlett-Packard's Internet and Applications System Division. "Simple things that shoppers take for granted just aren't there in the electronic space."
HP calls the strategy Web Quality of Service and server software dubbed HP ServiceControl is the first product to give it form.
By using the new software on their transaction servers, businesses can set up electronic shops that will better handle surges in customer traffic, the company says. HP ServiceControl gives priority service to the packets of "preferred customers" so that they are handled ahead of standard Internet traffic.
HP claims this will do away with unexpected waits for shoppers and business customers buying products and services online.
The technology HP is bringing to transaction software is "quality of service," dubbed QoS. It comes from a networking term that specifies a guaranteed throughput level for specially marked packets. To build QoS capability into its transaction software, HP collaborated with router giant Cisco Systems.
Capabilities built into the HP ServiceControl product include admission control for prioritizing and managing loads on the Web server, and persistent connections. The latter is a special implementation of the Web's hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), preventing server overload by limiting use to high-priority users.
Zona Research senior analyst Vernon Keenan said the ultimate impact from QoS service is that shoppers could see a "faster" button on their screen. "You might pay a quarter or a dollar for that session, but you would have a guaranteed transaction capacity now," Keenan said. "They will get a guarantee that the server will be up and able to execute their transactions in a predictable way." This is especially important in business-to-business transactions, he said.
For the retailer or wholesaler it enables them to guarantee transaction throughput with their back end. "You need to guarantee that the connection to the back-office servers is always up and running," Keenan said.
HP said the service is the first of its kind, a claim which is supported by Zona's own findings, according to Keenan. HP contends that one of its primary competitors in electronic commerce, IBM, doesn't have corresponding quality-of-service features in its software.
"Today, IBM's approach to this has been basically to over-provision; to throw more hardware at the environment," said Cassinelli.
IBM counters that although its software doesn't offer quality-of-service capability at the networking level, the ability to distribute traffic load according to different criteria comes close.
"You can load balance to individual servers based upon rules," said Mike Ensley, IBM product manager for the company's Network Dispatcher Web server software, "such as your client's IP address, the time of day or some other trigger -- to route to a high-response server." This could give customers an "effective" quality of service, he said.
A second component of HP's announcement today was its partnerships with ecommerce companies that augment product areas HP doesn't cover. HP Domain Commerce, an electronic-commerce server platform, will bundle Internet commerce application software from companies which have developed products for electronic payment, imaging, and management, offering what HP calls a "full-production Internet-commerce environment."
These applications come from companies including BroadVision, iCat, Intershop, and Open Market.
Keenan believes HP has made a shrewd move in today's announcement, and one that will take more than marketing messages for competitors to respond to. "This is a pretty darn technical sell."
Thus the strategy could give HP a leg-up on IBM, Keenan said. "They've co-opted from IBM the e-business term," behavior he says is typical of HP's approach [of] "going after a competitor that's plowed the market initially."
