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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nord who wrote (28242)	2/23/1999 10:51:00 PM
From: Mang Cheng	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

"Home Shopping Network Upgrades Revenue-Generating Call Center Using Ultra-fast Gigabit Ethernet 3Com Systems" SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 23, 1999- High-Speed 3Com Systems Power Fault-Tolerant Call Center Network; Drive Leading TV Retailer's Sales Transactions and Profitability 3Com Corporation (Nasdaq: COMS - news) today announced that Home Shopping Network Inc. (HSN), the nation's premier television-based retailer, has upgraded its revenue-generating call center network using advanced 3Com systems to keep pace with rapidly accelerating sales. The 1000-seat call center network relies on a Gigabit Ethernet backbone based on 3Com's new generation CoreBuilder® 9000 enterprise switch and a myriad of SuperStack® II Ethernet workgroup switches. The company's St. Petersburg, Florida call center network rapidly and reliably processes HSN customers' purchases 24-hours a day. The fast-growing electronic retailer plans to complete the second phase of the call center network upgrade in early 1999 and is also using 3Com systems to create a separate data storage network isolating data backup traffic from the mission-critical network. Founded in 1977, Home Shopping reaches 70 million households through its three channels, The Home Shopping Network, America's Store, and Home Shopping En Espanol. The company's programs market a broad range of consumer items to viewers at exceptional values and provide them with the added convenience of shopping from home. In 1997, HSN's 5 million customers placed roughly 57 million calls to the call center and ordered more than $1 billion in merchandise. In the fourth quarter of 1998 Home Shopping reported both the largest volume month and single day sales in their history. Driven by 3Com systems, HSN's call center network is ably supporting this dramatic increase in calls and sales while maintaining the company's tradition of customer service excellence. Using a newly deployed client/server Sales and Service System (SASS) application, HSN is accelerating customer sales and service activities such as retrieval of customer account information, execution of credit authorizations and initiation of fulfillment and shipping. Fueled by the call center data network's sub-second response times, SASS's simplified graphical user interface lets HSN process more calls per hour than the company's character-based mainframe application, which the software replaced. The HSN call center network is also reducing the time it takes agents to answer customer calls through its support of Lucent Technologies' automated call distribution (ACD) system, which automatically routes incoming calls to the first available agent. To optimize the call center network's performance, HSN's switched Ethernet storage network backs up all transactions captured by the revenue-driven SASS application. The storage network also allows HSN to choose from a myriad of backup options, including continuous online backup of network servers and the company's Unisys ClearPath mainframe without impacting the production environment. ''HSN's call center handles an average of 160,000 calls per day, with peaks as high as 250,000 calls, and the number is climbing,'' said Roderick White, the company's vice president of telecommunications. ''Because our call center is a source of revenue generation, we need a high-speed network that can support our bandwidth demands and run around the clock without disruption of service. Using 3Com's Gigabit and switched Ethernet solutions, we're benefiting from a fast and completely fault-tolerant environment that can scale to support our network traffic needs today and into the foreseeable future.'' The CoreBuilder 9000 switch and SuperStack II Switch 3900s additionally are providing sixteen virtual LANs (VLANs), which are optimizing response times from application servers to call center agents speaking with customers. The VLANs also ensure that if any part of the call center network fails, other parts will remain unaffected. The two CoreBuilder 3500 systems provide Layer 3 switching between VLANs and have redundant 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connections to the Unisys mainframe. Each call center Intel Pentium PC connects to one SuperStack II Switch 1100 switch via switched 10 Mbps Ethernet. HSN's new data storage network will use an Ethernet backbone consisting of two SuperStack II Switch 9300 switches and 11 SuperStack II Switch 3900 switches that connect to 50 servers. Along with the 3Com hardware, HSN is using 3Com's Transcend® Enterprise Manager management software to control, configure and manage its new infrastructure. HSN also plans to use 3Com's InfoVista(TM) service level manager application and Transcend Traffix(TM) Manager. InfoVista provides trending and analysis capabilities that will manage the SASS application's response time and service levels. Traffix offers complete network monitoring capabilities, including utilization, statistics and alerts, and will be used to manage the company's VLANs. Using 3Com Care(TM) professional services, 3Com complemented HSN's in-house network engineering staff by providing network installation, design, configuration and performance checks. 3Com is also delivering 24 x 7 support, free software upgrades and advance hardware replacement to HSN through its Guardian(sm) service program. ''3Com gave us a total enterprise solution that completely meets our networking needs,'' said Joseph Piplica, the company's director of network engineering. ''The scalable speed and reliability of their systems, and their comprehensive support ensures that we can process every customer transaction with maximum efficiency and continue to provide the quality service we need to retain our customer's loyalty and improve our bottom line.'' Bandwidth Insurance for the Transaction Explosion HSN's new networks resulted from a virtual explosion of call center transaction volumes in 1998. The company's preexisting 10 Mbps (megabits per second) shared Ethernet network was already buckling under the weight of the slower call center sales application as well as administrative applications and traffic generated by data backups. Facing the need to support even greater network traffic, Home Shopping selected 3Com based on the price/performance of its Gigabit Ethernet CoreBuilder 9000 switch and SuperStack II edge switches as well as its comprehensive 3Com Care project management services. ''3Com provided superior Gigabit technology at very competitive price points as well as design and implementation services that enabled us to deploy the new call center network in a record two-and-a-half weeks,'' said Piplica. ''In my years of experience, I've never seen a project of this magnitude completed so quickly and so flawlessly.'' Launched in September 1998, the HSN call center network uses a Gigabit Ethernet backbone comprised of a single CoreBuilder 9000 enterprise switch with redundant Gigabit Ethernet connections to two CoreBuilder 3500 Layer 3 high-function switches and two SuperStack II Switch 3900 switches. Equipped with four power supplies and redundant switching engines, the CoreBuilder 9000 switch also has redundant 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet connections to 44 SuperStack II Switch 1100 switches in ten call center wiring closets. The two SuperStack II Switch 3900 switches deliver redundant 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet links to three Sun Microsystems application and enterprise servers, 11 Compaq Proliant Microsoft Windows NT servers and a Unisys ClearPath mainframe. The servers support general business, email and the SASS application; the mainframe supports order entry services triggered by customer's purchases.