HP's e-commerce strategy keys in on QoS

By James Niccolai
Network World, 5/18/98

San Francisco - Hewlett-Packard Co. last week unveiled a new electronic commerce strategy aimed at letting businesses allocate more system resources to their most important customers and applications.

Outlining HP's so-called Web Quality of Service (QoS) strategy at a press conference here, HP executives said Internet users demand a predictable level of service from Web sites before they will plunge into electronic commerce. "In order to provide a good customer experience, you've got to have a predictable service," said Nigel Ball, general manager of HP's Internet and Applications Systems Division.

Web QoS consists of hardware, middleware and software products that allow companies and service providers to give functions such as online banking and sales priority over activities such as Web browsing during times of peak activity, Ball said.

The technologies also allow businesses to identify their most important customers - by using cookies, IP addresses and other means - and give those users priority access to server re-sources. Customers in a queue will have the consolation of an onscreen message that tells them how long it will take to get access to a site, company officials said.

The first product based on Web QoS technologies will be HP ServiceControl, which the company plans to ship June 1 for its HP 9000 Enterprise servers and HP-UX Unix operating system. The product includes Admission Control, a policy-based system for prioritizing and managing the workload on a server, and Persistant Connections, which is designed to prevent server overload by limiting access to high-priority users, HP said.

In August, the company plans to offer a complete server platform called HP Domain Commerce, which will include HP ServiceControl bundled with a handful of the most essential electronic commerce tools and applications, officials said.

These include a tool for managing electronic commerce applications centrally from a Web browser; payment software from HP's wholly owned subsidiary, Verifone; and HP's OpenPix software for viewing, sharing and printing high-bandwidth images over the Internet.

HP Domain Commerce was designed to work well with electronic applications from partners BroadVision, Inc., iCat Corp., Intershop Communications, Inc. and Open Market, Inc.

HP's initial QoS offerings were developed for its HP-UX version of Unix. The company plans to port HP Domain Commerce to Windows NT and possibly to other versions of Unix in the future, although no concrete plans for other Unix systems have been made, Ball said.

HP ServiceControl is priced at $800 per CPU, while HP Domain Commerce will cost $3,995, HP said.

The company also an-nounced ongoing work with Cisco Systems, Inc. to enhance HPs QoS offerings. HP ServiceControl includes a technology that improves load balancing using Cisco's LocalDirector. Also, the companies are working together to more tightly integrate Cisco's CiscoAssure Policy Networking with HP's QoS technologies, Cisco officials said.

HP hopes its Web QoS strategy will enable it to compete better against system vendors IBM and Sun Microsystems, Inc., Ball said. In one of several jibes at IBM, Ball criticized the company for trying to decrease customer wait times by "throwing more hardware at the problem," rather than making better use of available resources.

World Cup debut

HP's Web QoS will receive a public trial over the next few months during the 1998 World Cup Football tournament. HP is the IT hardware and maintenance supplier for the event, and a component of Web QoS that gives priority to users making online transactions will be used on the World Cup's online store, officials said.

For more information, HP can be contacted at (650) 857-1501.

Niccolai is a correspondent with IDG News Services San Francisco bureau.