Huntsville, AL -- Intergraph Computer Systems, a manufacturer of Intel/Windows NT-based servers and workstations, announced that the company's high-performance, high-availability InterServe servers have been selected by Tower Records (West Sacramento, Calif.) to power the giant music retailer's electronic commerce site on the World Wide Web. The @Tower music store, backed by the performance of Pentium Pro processor-based InterServe servers, is a premier Web site where customers can browse through a catalog of more than 200,000 music titles from top artists, then make purchases via secure credit card transactions. Customers can also listen to hundreds of demonstration tracks via RealAudio streaming audio technology. Since installing the robust and scalable InterServe servers, Tower Records has scaled up to millions of "hits" per week from customers visiting TowerRecords.com, while reducing network administration overhead and improving customer service and response time for online purchases. "We have experienced excellent reliability and high performance with our InterServe servers since going online with the systems," said Eoin McGloughlin, Online Service Director for Tower Records. "On average, we are getting in excess of three million hits per week. During the pre-Christmas buying season, we easily trebled that number. Yet we did not experience a single problem with the systems. With Intergraph's outstanding server technology, Tower Records can easily manage high-traffic demands while keeping our successful @Tower global music store operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week." "Tower Records' experience is a common one for Intergraph customers," said Lee Hanson, vice president of Intergraph Computer Systems' Server Division. "InterServe servers are designed to deliver maximum performance, at the same time dramatically reducing administrative overhead for the most common tasks. The combination of manageability and performance makes the InterServe family perfect for mission-critical applications such as e-commerce sites and large, enterprise internets and extranets. Affordably priced, these servers are designed so organizations can buy what they need today and then scale the systems as their needs grow." Tower Records' four InterServe servers, are each equipped with dual 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors, 512 MB RAM, and three 4 GB RAID protected hard drives. Upgradeable to four processors, the servers can be mounted either in rack mounts or in deskside configurations. The identically configured systems run Windows NT Server 4.0, Microsoft Internet Information Server, and Microsoft Merchant Server.
Tower Records Selects Intergraph’s InterServe Servers
March 13, 1998