eBay dumps microsoft for java to achieve 1 BILLION page views a day

[Tor Iver Wilhelmsen]

They never used .Net. Don't fall for the asj spin.

In the CHOICE between going for .Net and going for J2EE they chose the
latter - this can be seen as "ditching" .Net.

 

[John]

In the CHOICE between going for .Net and going for J2EE they chose the
latter - this can be seen as "ditching" .Net.

You can't ditch something you didn't have in the first place.

"eBay decided to switch from a Microsoft/.NET/Windows architecture on the
backend to a J2EE one" - asj

 

[John]

In the CHOICE between going for .Net and going for J2EE they chose the
latter - this can be seen as "ditching" .Net.

Read his statement again.....

"eBay decided to switch from a Microsoft/.NET/Windows architecture on the
backend to a J2EE one, which might explain why their java backend will
handle up to 1 BILLION page views a day! the funny thing was eBay was one of
the major case studies for .NET at the beginning, when there was still some
hype about it."

 

[Grant Wagner]

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, I heard Erik Funkenbusch say:

Perhaps it was a development project rather than their production systems that
was switched?

Neither: <url: http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,3959,659060,00.asp />

"Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and IBM all would compete, in a series of tests, to
supply eBay with new software to run its auctions..."

Ah, yes. Quite like Microsoft trying several times and failing to change
hotmail over to Windows. Which you like to insist never happened, since they
never *really* tried, since every time they planned to do so they realized
before spending those millions that it would fail because Windows simply isn't
good enough.

Then why does eBay still use Microsoft-IIS/4.0 as the front-end on their 3-tier
architecture if it's "simply not good enough":

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Age: 44
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:09:03 GMT
Content-Length: 50269
Content-Type: text/html
Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
Content-Location: http://10.8.35.99/index.html
Last-Modified: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:02:00 GMT
ETag: "0a4895ce255c31:12f40"
Via: 1.1 cache15 (NetCache NetApp/5.2.1R3)

But I guess Sun is much more reliable:

"But, outside executives say, the choice is a clear outgrowth of eBay's ongoing
battle to heighten control of its infrastructure, a battle that began in earnest
in June of 1999 when a Sun server at eBay failed and the site went down for 22
hours."

Oops, a 22 hour outage using good ol' reliable Sun hardware. Wonder how many
millions that cost eBay.

They switched their plans. The question is why; the answer is because .NET is
just more monopoly crapware.

No.

"But Whitman and eBay, which netted $48.3 million on revenue of $431.4 million
last year, were looking at every company that made application server software
which might be mature enough to replace the software that eBay had."

Note "...every company...".

"To make its choice, eBay devised its own tests, according to participants in the
competition. Contestants were given sample code from eBay's current auction
software and told to develop an application that processed a representative mix of
eBay's top four transactions on its auction site—View Item, List Item, Bid, and
Seller List."

"EBay then rated the applications based on a number of pass/fail tests:
performance compared to eBay's current software, performance gained on a server
with additional processors and memory, performance gained on multiple servers, and
the ability to recover in the midst of a transaction."

"EBay has declined repeatedly to discuss the details behind its choice of IBM, or
the competition in which participants say they engaged."

So, you can make all the outrageous claims you want about why eBay made the
decision they made, but it's all speculation, because eBay isn't saying why, and
they're the only ones who actually /know/.

 

[asj]

"eBay decided to switch from a Microsoft/.NET/Windows architecture on the
backend to a J2EE one" - asj

perhaps your deadened brain doesn't know that "switch" can refer to a
"change in plans"?

microsoft had formed a big strategic alliance with eBay at the time, and
eBay implemented (or were implementing) already parts of .NET (inc
Passport), when eBay abruptly switched to IBM's Websphere.

the alliance was VERY big for both microsoft and its developers (read
about how ballmer was so "excited" about it, or how developers felt the
win validated .NET)

unfortunately for ballmy, eBay relented later when they decided .NET
just would not do it....

to quote: "eBay's evaluation of Microsoft's .NET initiative concluded
that, at the time, it was not ready to meet its needs.....But, as we dug
into the different issues, we reached the realization that we needed a
more OPEN ARCHITECTURE accompanied with overarching process changes.
This paradigm was integral to our decision to go with Java technology."


"eBay and Microsoft Announce Strategic Alliance to Expand Global Online
Presence"
http://www.microsoft.com/MSCorp/presspass/press/2001/mar01/03-12ebaypr.asp

"eBay to adopt Microsoft .Net"
http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1513/ITW_3-13-01_msebay/

"More light shed on Microsoft, eBay deal"
http://www.zdnetindia.com/news/features/stories/16913.html

"Microsoft, eBay Seal E-Commerce Alliance"
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/8093.html

"eBay Links Up With Microsoft"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/03/12/archive/technology/main278355.shtml

"eBay, Microsoft cozy up for new alliance"
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2001/03/13/ebay/




-----------------------------------------

According to Geiger, the application platform decision was based on the
needs to "increase productivity by creating a component-based
architecture, which would do away with the monolithic code base." eBay's
evaluation centered on the platform's ability to meet the high
quality-of-service requirements (flexibility, adaptability,
manageability, scalability, and security) and the need for the
architecture to be comprised of frameworks focused on reuse. The two
candidates were Microsoft's .NET initiative and industry-standard J2EE
technology, with the latter initially considered as a long shot. Geiger
recalls, "This was not in the initial vision of V3: If you were to ask
me back in December [2000] if we would go to Java [technology], I would
have said 'No.'"

eBay's evaluation of Microsoft's .NET initiative concluded that, at the
time, it was not ready to meet its needs. As Geiger puts it, "We were
not going to adopt a brand new technology." This was somewhat surprising
since eBay's existing "architectural foundation was firmly rooted in C++
[technology]. But, as we dug into the different issues, we reached the
realization that we needed a more open architecture accompanied with
overarching process changes. This paradigm was integral to our decision
to go with Java technology."

 

[asj]

So, you can make all the outrageous claims you want about why eBay made the
decision they made, but it's all speculation, because eBay isn't saying why, and
they're the only ones who actually /know/.

i think they did say something:

to quote: "eBay's evaluation of Microsoft's .NET initiative concluded
that, at the time, it was not ready to meet its needs.....But, as we dug
into the different issues, we reached the realization that we needed a
more OPEN ARCHITECTURE accompanied with overarching process changes.
This paradigm was integral to our decision to go with Java technology."

so, after all the press and hoopla surrounding the adoption of .net by
eBay, it turns out J2EE met their needs much better.

why wouldn't it?

it's MORE OPEN, it's SUPPORTED BY MANY VENDORS AND OPEN SOURCE
ORGANIZATIONS, it's NOT GOING TO BE CHURNED IN 4-5 YEARS, and it's
MULTI-PLATFORM - as in, you can use linux, solaris, mac, windows, or
whatever and not just security-challenged microsoft windows for it.

 

[Joseph A Nagy Jr]

eBay had been implementing a lot of the parts of .net, including passport
when this happened. they also had been heavily into windows, which is why
ballmer had been so angry when this happened. then i believe IBM's
websphere beat out both microsoft and sun after a series of tests eBay
did.

As a passport user (I've had a hotmail account since before MS's take
over) and as an eBay user that eBay has used .NET in the form of at least
of the PassPort service.

it sure screwed microsoft though, since eBay was trumpeted very VERY
loudly as the biggest backer of microsoft's .net...

I wonder how much grease Ballmer needed.

there are of course, other notable examples of companies switching to j2ee
AFTER using .NET extensively, one recent example i pointed out was Cerner:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/02/06/HNibmcerner2_1.html

I use Linux

Removing the Java group and setting followup for here.

 

[Joseph A Nagy Jr]

Ebay has never run on .NET. I don't know where you get this information.
Ebay had originally planned to move to .NET back in early 2001, but ended
up not doing so after a bidding war with Sun and IBM.

You can read what happened here:

http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,3959,659060,00.asp

As such, Ebay never "switched" from anything Microsoft.

You and that article are completely wrong as I have used PassPort ON eBay
(and PassPort is part of .NET).

 

[Tom Shelton]

It's N-tier architecture:

<url: http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,3959,659060,00.asp />

"EBay will use J2EE to transfer some of this workload to a third tier of
servers, running software from IBM. With this new setup, one set of servers
at the front will present information to auction participants, a second set
in the middle will execute the business logic of the auctions (for example,
"don't bid on an item over $100"); and, a third set at the back end will
continue to handle access to Oracle databases."

Ahh, that explains it and makes real sense as well - I should have realized
that's what they were doing... Thanks

Tom Shelton

 

[Grant Wagner]

i think they did say something:

to quote: "eBay's evaluation of Microsoft's .NET initiative concluded
that, at the time, it was not ready to meet its needs.....But, as we dug
into the different issues, we reached the realization that we needed a
more OPEN ARCHITECTURE accompanied with overarching process changes.
This paradigm was integral to our decision to go with Java technology."

Yes, "... at the time, [.Net] was not ready to meet its needs ...". We have no idea
whether it would now. That, however isn't really relevant. In the end, eBay reviewed
it's requirements, tested products, and picked what it felt was the best architecture
for it at the time. That's how companies do it. They don't look at the products and
make a decision based on pre-conceived (and possibly misinformed) notions of "what's
best".

Other companies have performed the same sort of evaluation and choosen products other
then J2EE.

so, after all the press and hoopla surrounding the adoption of .net by
eBay, it turns out J2EE met their needs much better.

If J2EE met their needs better, then that's what they should be using. What does press
and hoopla have to do with the individual platform choices of individual companies?
The fact that J2EE met eBay's needs better means that J2EE met eBay's needs better,
nothing more.

why wouldn't it?

Because companies have different needs and requirements. eBay's requirements led them
to J2EE, other companies' requirements lead them to ColdFusion, PHP or .Net.

it's MORE OPEN, it's SUPPORTED BY MANY VENDORS AND OPEN SOURCE
ORGANIZATIONS, it's NOT GOING TO BE CHURNED IN 4-5 YEARS, and it's
MULTI-PLATFORM - as in, you can use linux, solaris, mac, windows, or
whatever and not just security-challenged microsoft windows for it.

I really don't understand the "multi-platform" argument. eBay now has a /huge/ /huge/
/huge/ investment in hardware, they aren't going to suddenly throw it all away and
start using something else. Once a company has made the initial investment in some
J2EE solution, the fact that they /could/ run it on Linux or Mac becomes irrelevant.

Why does Microsoft Windows get the "security-challenged" moniker, but none of the
other operating systems listed do? While <url: http://www.cert.org/advisories/ />
lists many Microsoft product vulnerabilities, it also lists many non-Microsoft product
vulnerabilities.

Properly secured by competent administrators, Windows presents no more of a security
risk then any other operating system listed. A competent administrator wouldn't allow
telnet traffic directly to a Linux or Solaris server from the Internet, and a
competent administrator wouldn't allow RPC traffic directly to a Windows server from
the Internet. The fact that Ma and Pa Kettle running Windows XP (without the included
firewall being enabled I might add) are vulnerable to an RPC exploit is not analogous
to Windows servers running in a properly secured environment. Similarly, a copy of Red
Hat running sendmail 8.12.7 or earlier is vulnerable, this does not mean that every
company that uses Red Hat on their servers is exploitable.

eBay runs Microsoft-IIS/4.0 as their web server. Windows NT 4.0 has at least one known
vulnerability which has not been fixed by Microsoft, yet, somehow, eBay's servers are
still secure.

 

[The Ghost In The Machine]

In comp.lang.java.advocacy, asj
<[email protected]>
wrote

awhile back, eBay decided to switch from a Microsoft/.NET/Windows
architecture on the backend to a J2EE one, which might explain why their
java backend will handle up to 1 BILLION page views a day! the funny
thing was eBay was one of the major case studies for .NET at the
beginning, when there was still some hype about it.

interesting post about a few java case studies:
http://weblogs.java.net/pub/wlg/268

"I love looking through case studies. They can teach you so much about
what to do, what not to do, what is in vogue, etc. All those useful
design patterns came from analyzing lots of case studies and seeing what
worked; and sometimes, more importantly, what didn't work."

"So this year I decided to start listing case studies when I find them.
And a great place to start is JavaOne, where lots of the really big case
studies get presented. So here they are. The highlights for me: eBay
architected for 1 billion page views a day; The Brazilian National
Health handling 100 million outpatient procedues a month; 24 million
Java Cards used by Taiwan Health Insurance; Capital One Financial
handling 80 million transactions each month."

Odd.

$ telnet www.ebay.com 80
Trying 66.135.208.87...
Connected to pages.ebay.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Age: 8
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:28:05 GMT
Content-Length: 49670
Content-Type: text/html
Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
Content-Location: http://10.8.35.99/index.html
Last-Modified: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:21:14 GMT
ETag: "01160ce555c31:12c69"
Via: 1.1 cache15 (NetCache NetApp/5.2.1R3)

Maybe they missed one. -- Nope, all four of them are
responding with IIS/4. (The four from the DNS lookup I
gave, anyway.)

It's possible this is a "frontend" website though. I'm
not sure what to make of the Content-Location: header.

It gets weirder. There's a "Powered by IBM" logo at the
upper right of the main page.

One of their featured items is a 3,000+ collection of
cartoon glasses as of this writing; clicking on that takes
me to cgi.ebay.com, also powered by Microsoft IIS/4.0.
Either they're in the process of transitioning or someone's
confused. Maybe I'm the confused one....

However, the website is highly responsive for me, if a
bit silly in spots (check out the "What is eBay?" link
for the silliness ).

 

[John D.]

however, eBay still DUMPED .net in favor of J2EE, and this made ballmer
even crazier since eBay was already heavily into windows on the front
end and was implementing .NET's Passport (aka, "give your ultimate
password to us and we'll take good care of it - Windows
Security"...bwahahahaha) at the time....in addition, it made microsoft
eat its own words since eBay was HEAVILY trumpeted as the premier win
for .NET....

1 BILLION page-views...wow.

Heh, it is just a bunch of FUD. These are *projected* numbers for 2005.
In fact eBay currently runs on Microsoft platform and doing great.
It is yet to be seen how successful the new eBay architecture will be.
These decisions are often made not by engineers but by senior executives
for the sake of press-releases. You can shout all you want how cool eBay
on J2EE will be. We will believe it when we see it. Get back to us when
it is up and running.

 

[asj]

FUD? really? then you must be shakin' in yar boots because the final
migration is almost complete.

eBay runs an in-house PROPRIETARY system on the backend, which is being
replaced by open standard java AS WE SPEAK (if i'm not mistaken by
looking at the paragraphs below, up to 75 percent of the eBay traffic is
now being handled by the new architecture-which translates to over
400-million transactions per day - the complete migration will be
finished in 2004). btw, i did not realize until now that sun is actually
providing the consulting services for this.

here's the status of the current move so far:

"EBAY V3 ROLLOUT STATUS" (dated April 2003)
http://www.sun.com/service/about/success/recent/ebay_5.html

Phase One-Design Concepts
Starting in December, 2000, Phase One demonstrated the viability of the
proposed architecture design, ranging from the need for individual
services' tiers, to security requirements, to proposed development
frameworks. According to Geiger, "The approach was to select a small
piece of the site's infrastructure for migration to the V3 architecture,
with the ability to quickly revert to the V2 version in case of any
problems. The plan was to learn from design patterns-those that
worked-for development efficiency. The development plan was designed in
mind all of the way down to those managing the operations, with the goal
of sorting through all of the issues at one time, thereby allowing us to
resolve potential issues before other applications were brought into
production."
Phase One release of the J2EE technology-based architecture was
completed in December, 2001.

Phase Two-Proof of Concepts and Initial Deployments
Phase Two, with Phase One complete and the architecture solidified, was
intended, as Geiger explains, "to prove scalability by selecting one of
the most heavily trafficked areas of the site." That section is what
eBay defines as the "View Item" area, which accounts for about 65
percent of all site traffic. Although the functionality itself is fairly
simple, the high traffic and transaction volume of the area was chosen
to demonstrate that the new architecture would scale. Complete migration
of "View Item" to the new architecture was achieved in June, 2002.

With this migration, close to 75 percent of the eBay traffic is now
being handled by the new architecture-which translates to over
400-million transactions per day.

Phase Three-Wide-Scale Migration
The final phase, Phase Three, which was initiated in July, 2002, will be
to migrate eBay's entire infrastructure to the new architecture. Geiger
explains, "Phase Three is effectively bringing the J2EE
[technology-based] architecture to the masses, the general development
population."

In addition to moving its existing infrastructure to the new
architecture, all new business requests will be built on the V3
architecture. "Working with Sun Services' training specialists, we
developed a sequential, targeted training and development program," says
Geiger. That development plan includes certification in Java technology.
"With our development team now adequately trained in Java [technology]
and development best practices in place, we can begin designing and
implementing new business requests within this new architectural
framework." Geiger acknowledges that the completion of this change will
take time. "Now that we have proven it, we plan to have most areas of
our application infrastructure for all of the site migrated to the new
architecture by middle of 2004."

 

[paul cooke]

since so many of our resident wintrolls decided to open their mouths
without thinking, let's do a nice recap below:

they were in their finest "denial" mode... saying anything to avoid
actually admitting that .NET had lost big time...

 

[asj]

wow...an insider's viewpoint!

 

[Steve]

Please don't post off topic posts. comp.lang.java.advocacy is for the
promotion of microsoft products by microsoft employees

Steve

 

[luke]

Very good find on that implementation status for the eBay rollout!
This is an excellent case study on how to architect a mind-boggling IT
feat using J2EE, and it is an exceptional win for Java and all Java
developers (and other proponents of Open, multi-vendor standards).

I noticed there are actually other pages around that which examine the
architecture of the system.

Here is one note which I find very comforting, and puts to rest
accusations by the "winny-lovers" around here that it is not possible
to make J2EE portable. Indeed, I find the situation of J2EE (and Java
in general) similar to that voiced by political pundits who say that
democracy may not be the perfect solution, but it's the best solution
out there. In the same way, Java is the best solution out there when
it comes to enterprise-level robustness, security, and cross-platform
portability.

http://www.sun.com/service/about/success/recent/ebay_4.html

Staying to the J2EE Standard
Designing and building to the J2EE technology standard was a guiding
objective for eBay. "One of our architectural design principles was
the need to architect and write to industry-standard J2EE
specifications," notes Geiger. "We wanted to make sure that we would
have the flexibility of vendor independence, something that we felt
the Sun consultants would help ensure." Sun served in what Geiger
describes as a "watch-dog role," helping to ensure that development
coincided with J2EE technology standards—not drifting into
vendor-specific, proprietary architectural components. As part of the
endeavor to do this, eBay engaged Sun consultants to help design an
application architecture that it would run on both IBM WebSphere
Application Server and Sun ONE Application Server. "With an already
established, long-term relationship in place, we looked to Sun for
assistance in helping us to conform to industry standards," says
Geiger. "Sun wrote the standards behind Java technology, and we were
confident that the ‘inventor'; of such would give us the best
guidance. We thus engaged Sun consultants to help us learn how to
write code, how to do architecture design, how to document, how to
follow development best practices—essentially everything across the
spectrum. With the help of Sun, we are in a solid position with
compliance with the J2EE technology standard as well as processes and
documentation to help ensure that we stick to it."

here's the current status on it, dated April 2003:

"EBAY V3 ROLLOUT STATUS" (dated April 2003)
http://www.sun.com/service/about/success/recent/ebay_5.html

Phase One-Design Concepts
Starting in December, 2000, Phase One demonstrated the viability of the
proposed architecture design, ranging from the need for individual
services' tiers, to security requirements, to proposed development
frameworks. According to Geiger, "The approach was to select a small
piece of the site's infrastructure for migration to the V3 architecture,
with the ability to quickly revert to the V2 version in case of any
problems. The plan was to learn from design patterns-those that
worked-for development efficiency. The development plan was designed in
mind all of the way down to those managing the operations, with the goal
of sorting through all of the issues at one time, thereby allowing us to
resolve potential issues before other applications were brought into
production."
Phase One release of the J2EE technology-based architecture was
completed in December, 2001.

Phase Two-Proof of Concepts and Initial Deployments
Phase Two, with Phase One complete and the architecture solidified, was
intended, as Geiger explains, "to prove scalability by selecting one of
the most heavily trafficked areas of the site." That section is what
eBay defines as the "View Item" area, which accounts for about 65
percent of all site traffic. Although the functionality itself is fairly
simple, the high traffic and transaction volume of the area was chosen
to demonstrate that the new architecture would scale. Complete migration
of "View Item" to the new architecture was achieved in June, 2002.

With this migration, close to 75 percent of the eBay traffic is now

being handled by the new architecture-which translates to over
400-million transactions per day.

Phase Three-Wide-Scale Migration
The final phase, Phase Three, which was initiated in July, 2002, will be
to migrate eBay's entire infrastructure to the new architecture. Geiger
explains, "Phase Three is effectively bringing the J2EE
[technology-based] architecture to the masses, the general development
population."

In addition to moving its existing infrastructure to the new
architecture, all new business requests will be built on the V3
architecture. "Working with Sun Services' training specialists, we
developed a sequential, targeted training and development program," says
Geiger. That development plan includes certification in Java technology.
"With our development team now adequately trained in Java [technology]
and development best practices in place, we can begin designing and
implementing new business requests within this new architectural
framework." Geiger acknowledges that the completion of this change will
take time. "Now that we have proven it, we plan to have most areas of
our application infrastructure for all of the site migrated to the new
architecture by middle of 2004."

 

[asj]

Wasn't Sun responsible for major eBay outages? Some people never learn.
Besides, 74% out of these 75% are handled by Microsoft web-servers
on frontend and Oracle database on backend.

do yourself a favor and stop looking like an idiot and actually read the
post and the link (i posted it below):
the new JAVA backend is handling 75% of the total load already (from the
proprietary in-house system). by 2004, they'll have replaced everything
(including the front end, probably with jsp).

also, read kent dolan's posts...he seems to have worked there...one of
his quotes:
"I know that when I left, with a mix of WinNT and Solaris systems
running
huge modules built from the same code base, the Solaris stuff built with
gmake and gcc, the WinNT stuff built with M$'s dappy VC++ bugfarm, the
cold crash rate was close to 200 to 1 to the disfavor of WinNT; I cannot
imagine that .NET, given the same M$ developers and M$ corporate
attitude toward blessing bug-ridden crap for commercial release, faired
a bit better. So in the end, M$ and .NET was probably just too expensive
a choice to
continue exploring."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"EBAY V3 ROLLOUT STATUS" (dated April 2003)
http://www.sun.com/service/about/success/recent/ebay_5.html

Phase One-Design Concepts
Starting in December, 2000, Phase One demonstrated the viability of the
proposed architecture design, ranging from the need for individual
services' tiers, to security requirements, to proposed development
frameworks. According to Geiger, "The approach was to select a small
piece of the site's infrastructure for migration to the V3 architecture,
with the ability to quickly revert to the V2 version in case of any
problems. The plan was to learn from design patterns-those that
worked-for development efficiency. The development plan was designed in
mind all of the way down to those managing the operations, with the goal
of sorting through all of the issues at one time, thereby allowing us to
resolve potential issues before other applications were brought into
production."
Phase One release of the J2EE technology-based architecture was
completed in December, 2001.

Phase Two-Proof of Concepts and Initial Deployments
Phase Two, with Phase One complete and the architecture solidified, was
intended, as Geiger explains, "to prove scalability by selecting one of
the most heavily trafficked areas of the site." That section is what
eBay defines as the "View Item" area, which accounts for about 65
percent of all site traffic. Although the functionality itself is fairly
simple, the high traffic and transaction volume of the area was chosen
to demonstrate that the new architecture would scale. Complete migration
of "View Item" to the new architecture was achieved in June, 2002.

With this migration, close to 75 percent of the eBay traffic is now
being handled by the new architecture-which translates to over
400-million transactions per day.

Phase Three-Wide-Scale Migration
The final phase, Phase Three, which was initiated in July, 2002, will be
to migrate eBay's entire infrastructure to the new architecture. Geiger
explains, "Phase Three is effectively bringing the J2EE
[technology-based] architecture to the masses, the general development
population."

In addition to moving its existing infrastructure to the new
architecture, all new business requests will be built on the V3
architecture. "Working with Sun Services' training specialists, we
developed a sequential, targeted training and development program," says
Geiger. That development plan includes certification in Java technology.
"With our development team now adequately trained in Java [technology]
and development best practices in place, we can begin designing and
implementing new business requests within this new architectural
framework." Geiger acknowledges that the completion of this change will
take time. "Now that we have proven it, we plan to have most areas of
our application infrastructure for all of the site migrated to the new
architecture by middle of 2004."