TESTIMONIALS: What They Said
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Sur La Table Sets its E-commerce Table with Coyote Point's Equalizer
Fabled Cookware Retailer/Cataloguer Launches Commerce Site with Load Balancing, Failover Ensured from the Start
Seattle, WA — In the Internet's distant past - maybe a year ago — load balancing was often purchased as a crisis-management solution. Companies suddenly flooded with online traffic that they could not handle would search frantically for a means to shorten customers' connection times and provide failover in the event that a server went down suddenly.
By mid-1999, as Internet traffic continued its geometric growth and brick-and-mortar companies entered the e-commerce arena in force, load balancing emerged as an acknowledged best practice - a key infrastructure element that should be in place prior to launch.
One brick-and-mortar retailer and direct marketer that had this best practice deployed at the outset is Sur La Table, the well-regarded merchant of the world's highest-quality cookware and tabletop goods.
Established in 1972 as a retailer in Seattle's Pike Place Farmers' Market and as a direct marketer in 1988, Sur La Table began developing an e-commerce site in June of 1999. When the company launched the beautiful and highly navigable www.surlatable.com last October, its infrastructure was ready with ample server capacity and a traffic load managed by Coyote Point's Equalizer.
Equalizer, an intelligent load balancing appliance, routes incoming traffic among server clusters, using multiple criteria to determine which server is best equipped to take each hit. Equalizer provides failover by detecting server failure and automatically bypassing failed servers. Active Content Verification tests all components of each server in each cluster, ensuring that not only server hardware but also the server operating system and application software are fully operational. A browser-based graphical display of server and cluster performance makes it easy to determine when more server capacity is needed. Starting at $3,995, Equalizer is the most cost-effective online traffic management system on the market today.
"From the day we went live, Equalizer has distributed traffic evenly, and visitors' connection times have been more than satisfactory," said Jaren Balzer, Vice President, Information Technology of Sur La Table. "Installation went smoothly, and Coyote Point's tech support easily dealt with minor glitches."
Down Server is No Problem
Also from the start, Coyote Point's Equalizer has ensured that 24x7 uptime for Sur La Table's 4,500 product listings. "We've shut servers down for maintenance 10-15 times since our launch ten months ago, and our customers have never known it," said Mr. Balzer. "Equalizer's been the good angel in our infrastructure - invisible, but worth its weight in gold. We know it's there, maximizing server efficiency and providing failover, but we never touch it. It's a zero-maintenance product that scales the whole infrastructure. "
About Sur La Table
Sur La Table is a leading retail, direct market and online provider of top-quality cookware, kitchen tools and tableware to culinary professionals and home chefs. Founded in Seattle in 1972, Sur La Table has expanded to 14 locations throughout the West and Southwest, with another 10 locations to debut in 2000. The company's award-winning catalog reaches nearly 9 million people worldwide. Surlatable.com, launched in October 1999, makes the cream of the company's 12,500 items available for sale online. Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Sur La Table can be reached at 800-243-0852 or on the Web at www.surlatable.com.
About Coyote Point Systems
Coyote Point Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of server management devices for enabling scalable, highly-available server clusters. Recognized for intuitive configuration and low maintenance, price/performance and superior trending analysis, Coyote Point's Equalizer ensures fast connections and fail-safe 24x7 access to web sites and other critical Internet and intranet applications. Envoy, a software add-on, enables Equalizer to direct online traffic across multiple server clusters located anywhere in the world. Coyote Point solutions support all Internet protocols and accommodate all operating systems. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and can be contacted directly at 650-969-6000 or on the web at www.coyotepoint.com
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