Electronic Commerce

Net Perceptions 

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Contact:                                                                                                                                               Net Perceptions                                                                                                                                   7700 France Avenue South
Edina , MN 55435
Email (U.S. Offices): info@netperceptions.com

Tools used: IONA Technologies Orbix 2000™  and Orbix Web

Problem:

Net Perceptions® needed a successful eBusiness infrastructure that would integrate well with other systems. Net Perceptions, a leading supplier of realtime personalization solutions, provides online "clicks and mortar" retailers like eToys, wine.com and Ticketmaster Online with software that learns about individual customer preferences, then makes personalized product and service recommendations that can help increase sales.

Solution:

Net Perceptions' product line provides realtime personalization solutions for e-commerce, Web site content, Web site ad targeting, outbound e-mail marketing campaigns, call centers and internal knowledge management. Each product meets a specific need for personalization and recommendation, while using a key underlying technology called the Recommendation Engine. This Recommendation Engine must be able to exchange data with the Net Perceptions solution-specific software by passing user selection data, Web click stream data and past purchase history from a number of different sources to the Recommendation Engine which uses the data to formulate and return recommendations. Net Perceptions embeds IONA's Orbix and Orbix Web middleware products in the Recommendation Engine to accomplish this extensive communications task.

Orbix and OrbixWeb are C++ and Java-based CORBA application development and deployment products. Orbix comprises all the CORBA functionality, as well as Microsoft COM integration, naming services, and firewall traversal functionality.

"Net Perceptions' products rely on enabling middleware to provide realtime recommendations. We must receive user preference information from a variety of C++, Java™ and other applications on heterogeneous platforms, assimilate it, create the recommendations and send them to the appropriate application for presentation to the customer," says Robert Randall, director, Core Technologis for Net Perceptions. "For all of this to work, customers must link the solution into their Web environments. This can be a very difficult proposition in a customer-controlled, heterogeneous environment without a proven, standards-based middleware product like Orbix."

As Net Perceptions began planning the development of new offerings, they evaluated the entire middleware market. They needed to find a standards-based middleware solution that could provide the stability, performance, reliability and scalability they needed. They also required a solution that would integrate well with their software and they sought a vendor that had a solid product direction. After evaluating options, Net Perceptions chose IONA because of the Orbix product's support for open standards and its ability to meet these criteria.

Net Perceptions was familiar with prior generations of the Orbix technology, and they also credit their good working relationship with IONA in their decision. Says Randall, "Our business is making realtime recommendations, so performance and scalability issues are highly visible to customers. We give the IONA solution high marks on performance and other quality measures such as flexibility, and maintainability-a concept they call 'XTreme scalability'."

Customers who purchase Net Perceptions products must integrate them into their existing, heterogeneous Web environments and an exposed Orbix API plays a key role. These customers give Net Perceptions high ratings for their ability to interoperate with the range of systems and applications used to run their Web sites. This includes C++ and Java applications running on Sun Solaris® and Windows® NT, a range of Web and e-commerce servers, dynamic content generation products from Vignette, popular databases, back-end and legacy systems and more. Adds Robert Randall, "Orbix's current platform support is important to us and our customers and we feel their announced choices for future platform support are right on, including LINUX and Windows 2000. IONA has a solution and a vision that will help keep us aligned with our customers' integration needs for the long term."

Online vendors are increasingly moving toward enterprise portals, which provide unified access to a wide array of information, applications, services and tools that relate to their businesses and the interests of the customers who visit their sites. At a broader level, Net Perceptions sees value in IONA's product direction for iPortal Suite™, a solution that provides all of the components required to build an enterprise portal infrastructure. iPortal Suite's foundation is Orbix, which provides the crucial middleware required to integrate the diverse applications and systems of an enterprise portal. "Because of Orbix's proven capabilities on the Web, we expect that Net Perceptions products will be able to snap into a customer's standards-based enterprise portal and provide realtime personalization services," explains Randall, "so our solution fits in nicely with bigger customer trends."