( BW)(GA-INTERNAP-NETWORK-SVCS)(INAP) Internap's Industry Leading Performance Guarantees Prove Vital for e-Commerce Businesses During 2002 Holiday Season
businesswire.com
Business Editors
ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 2003--
Key Online Retail Companies Find Internap a Crucial Element in Holiday Success
(NASDAQ: INAP) With fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, consumers turned to the Internet in unprecedented numbers to fulfill their 2002 holiday shopping needs.
According to BizRate.com, shoppers spent $7.9 billion online, an increase of 23 percent over the same period a year earlier. The increase in Internet shopping emphasized the importance of secure and reliable Internet connectivity for companies that consider online sales a fundamental part of their business.
In a recent comScore survey, three of the most visited online retail sites entering the holiday season included DealTime, CoolSavings.com and BizRate.com. All three companies rely upon Internap to provide their customers always-on Internet services, which include the broadband connectivity required for processing multiple consumer transactions.
"On an average day during this season, DealTime drove merchant referrals valued at more than $7.5 million per hour," said Amir Ashkenazi, Chief Technology Officer and co-Founder of DealTime, the world's leading shopping search engine. "If we had experienced even brief downtime during the peak holiday season, our merchants would have lost leads worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Internap has been an absolutely critical service for us."
In post holiday sales results, DealTime reported more than 15 million transactions during December while CoolSavings.com reported significant increases in bandwidth activity. Despite the heightened volume of consumer online activity, none of these customers experienced any downtime in service.
"Because of the often enormous traffic spikes CoolSavings.com experiences, we require tremendous bandwidth from our connectivity provider," said Joe Henson, vice president of Technology for CoolSavings.com, Inc., a leading online direct marketing and media company. "We chose Internap as our partner because they are the only provider that can guarantee 100 percent uptime and provide our more than 25 million registered consumers with the best path to access our Web site."
"Our technology allows us to provide a service level guarantee that is significantly stronger than our competitors can offer on their own networks," said Greg Peters, president and CEO of Internap. "We provide all these guarantees with built-in risk management and network redundancy; providing a level of service that our customers can depend on for e-commerce and other mission-critical applications."
Internap has more than 120 e-commerce/online services customers comprising industry segments such as online advertising, comparative shopping, real estate and online investing. Specific customers include such firms as 1-800-Flowers.com, AutoTrader.com, Cobalt, Ebay, Monster.com, Southwest Airlines and Travelocity.
"The holiday season illustrated the growing importance of the Internet as a vital component in the success of the e-commerce industry," said David Abrahamson, chief marketing officer at Internap. "Our e-commerce customers demand 100 percent uptime throughout the holiday season and throughout the year. It is crucial to their business. Our ability to deliver uninterrupted service is an essential element in their success."
Earlier this month, Internap announced new service level agreements (SLAs), which further its leadership role in advancing Internet-based business applications. These SLAs are Internet-wide and provide 100 percent network availability, less than 0.3 percent packet loss and 45 millisecond latency. Internap remains the only IP-network service provider offering Internet-wide SLAs and the only provider with latency, packet loss and jitter performance metrics that guarantee Internet-based applications at carrier-class levels.
About DealTime
DealTime is the world's leading online shopping search engine, reaching millions of shoppers worldwide every month. Through its Web sites, dealtime.com(R), dealtime.co.uk and other network sites (including AltaVista, Lycos and Excite Network), shoppers compare products, prices and stores across the Web. For merchants and manufacturers, DealTime delivers qualified, in-market buyers and lower customer-acquisition costs. For traffic aggregators, portals and other partner sites, DealTime provides a powerful search engine and superior shopping tools that enable them to more easily monetize their traffic. For consumers, DealTime supplies product information and an easy way to find the right product at the best price. DealTime Ltd. is a multi-national private company, venture-backed by key strategic and financial partners including Bertelsmann, AOL TimeWarner, Bank of America, Bain Capital, Singapore Telecom and others. DealTime, DealTime.com and the DealTime logo are registered trademarks of DealTime Ltd.
About CoolSavings
Founded in December 1994, CoolSavings is an online direct marketing and media company that provides smarter solutions to connect marketers to their target consumers. Combining industry-leading analytics and incentive technology with superior customer service that emphasizes a consultative approach, we enable a wide variety of advertisers to identify their best customers among our more than 20 million registered members and drive more effective campaign performance. CoolSavings' popular media property, coolsavings.com, is ranked the #1 coupon site on the Internet for 36 months in a row according to Jupiter Media Metrix reports (Jan. 2000 - December 2002).
About BizRate
Founded in 1996 and based in Los Angeles, BizRate.com (www.bizrate.com) is the leading comparison shopping site on the Web, and a leading provider of e-commerce research. The BizRate.com site offers shoppers best-of-breed comparison shopping features, including user-friendly Smiley Scale(TM) merchant reliability ratings compiled from a vast proprietary feedback network consisting of over 2,000 stores, who allow BizRate to solicit direct feedback at the point-of-sale and after fulfillment from over 10 million customers each month. In addition to merchant reliability information, BizRate.com offers product specs, consumer ratings and reviews of products, a comprehensive price comparison, including taxes, shipping and handling, as well as hundreds of special offers across 20 popular shopping categories. Consistently ranked in the top 5 e-commerce sites on the Web, BizRate.com is a privately held company. BizRate.com ratings appear on Consumer Reports Online and in Consumer Reports magazine.
About Internap
Founded in 1996, Internap offers business customers enhanced network services through a portfolio of Internet-based solutions that utilize all major domestic IP backbones. The company's patented route management technology and industry-leading service level guarantees promise 100 percent Internet availability, allowing customers to bypass congestion points and avoid other difficulties that plague conventional Internet connectivity. Internap provides services in numerous key markets throughout the United States, Europe and Japan including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Tokyo and Washington, D.C.
Internap(R) is a registered trademark of Internap. All other trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. For more information, please visit www.internap.com.
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CONTACT: Creaxion for Internap
Neal Wilder, 404/495-4512
Cell: 404/317-0698
neal@creaxion.com
KEYWORD: GEORGIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: E-COMMERCE INTERNET RETAIL CONSUMER/HOUSEHOLD
SOURCE: Internap |
