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Integration of Java and legacy systems drives music retailer's personalized Web commerce site
SCIENTISTS OFTEN MAKE lousy business people. The scientific method isn't an easy companion to the gambling nature of business or the emotional character of the market.
There is, however, one business any mathematician could love. It's called direct marketing. The only thing more scientifically calibrated than the direct marketing business is a closed ecological system such as Biosphere II. An exaggeration? On the contrary: At the top of the direct marketing pyramid, the BMG Direct music house probably does Mother Nature one better. From the millions of pieces of mail offering "12 CDs for 1 penny!" to the automatic monthly product orders received by 8 million BMG members, the executives of BMG know exactly what is going out and what will be coming in.
Unfortunately for BMG, even a perfectly balanced ecology must eventually face a change in weather. BMG's storm came in the form of a new market threat - and, if responded to correctly, a new market opportunity - Internet commerce.
New York-based BMG first thought to communicate with its customers via the Internet back in 1996, with a modest Web site at http://www.bmgmusicservice.com. Within a year, however, it became apparent that a simple informational Web site was an inadequate marketing vehicle at best, and a crippling competitive disadvantage at worst. Competitors such as CDNow were entering the market with slick multimedia Web sites that were able to reach customers more cheaply than BMG could using the U.S. Postal Service.
Obviously, BMG would have to set up its own I-commerce site. But in a business with otherwise little uncertainty, such a project pushed the company headlong into the unknown. The new notion of transactions via the Internet wasn't the problem. BMG executives don't suffer from a lack of imagination. Rather, the problem was technological: The company had to find a way to adapt its extensive legacy systems to its Web site, in order...