14 DAY TRIAL // With the spotless performance delivered by ShopLocal during the online shopping frenzy synonymous with the 2007 holiday season, Microsoft is applauding a success story of an infrastructure built with its own technology. The Redmond company revealed that ShopLocal featured Microsoft software at the back-end, and that although its server infrastructure took a heavy blow from the traffic explosion over the holidays (an increase of 84% in ShopLocal traffic), the website was available nonstop throughout the season.
"We spend all year planning to support our unique peak of online traffic. Microsoft provides ShopLocal with a cost-effective, scalable technology architecture that helped enable our site to accommodate a holiday increase of more than 600 percent over nonholiday traffic levels. Microsoft technologies enabled us to achieve 100 percent uptime for our retail clients and deliver the most up-to-date sales and product information to busy holiday shoppers", said Ed McLaughlin, senior director of technology at ShopLocal.
The peak in online traffic meant for ShopLocal's multichannel shopping and marketing services going as high as a record 267 million page views in the period associated with Thanksgiving. But the infrastructure of Microsoft technology managed the extra load with no problems. And as such, the Redmond company pointed Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as the software responsible for a flawless 100% uptime. At the same time, while applauding Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft is in fact gearing consumers to the upcoming products on the server side: Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 that will be released at the end of February 2008.
"Today's digital consumers want to be more knowledgeable about products, brands, features, pricing and even sourcing before they buy. We are pleased with ShopLocal's success using Microsoft software and solutions to help empower shoppers to be more in control of their interactions and experiences with retailers. Microsoft is committed to helping retailers and companies like ShopLocal offer consumers as seamless an experience as possible, whatever channel they choose to shop and make purchases", explained Geoff Thomas, general manager for the U.S. Retail and Hospitality Group at Microsoft.