Multiple ProStores outages affect merchants
According to ProStores’ message board, an unplanned, system-wide outage took place on Tuesday, May 28. The cause was said to be a third party vendor of data services. The issue lasted for hours and affected all merchants and tech support lines.
At 3:00PM Tuesday, ProStores reported, “We’ve identified and resolved the problem and are taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen in the future.” But within 30 minutes, a second outage occured; and was “related to the first.” The second outage took nearly five hours to resolve.
As a courtesy, successful transaction fees will be refunded to ProStores merchants for the month of May. This exposes one shortcoming of multi-tenant software. A service glitch at the data or application layer can affect everyone all at once.
MarketLive scores new investors, $20M in capital
On the heels of recent news that MarketLive will end support for version 4 and prior, the company announced today it has closed a new round of financing and added two new investors. According to the press release, “JAFCO Ventures and Northgate Capital, join existing investors, Sequoia Capital, Sigma Partners, Globespan Capital, and others, who all fully participated in the round,” which amounts to $20M in new capital.
Rumors had been swirling around that MarketLive had been putting out feelers for a sale. Today’s news sharply curbs that speculation.
Speaking briefly with Gartner last week, Gene Alvarez told me MarketLive’s decision to jettison the older versions is “customary for software companies” and essential to the company’s future. While this may be true, it’s no consolation to nearly half of their clients – many who launched on v.4 in the last 18 months after an arduous, expensive integration. Now they must start all over.
Perhaps MarketLive will follow the lead of other SaaS vendors, and invest capital to reduce the cost and complexity of upgrades. In April, MarketLive CEO Terry Austin said that improving upgrades was indeed part of the plan. While admitting that migration is expensive, he asserts it is still more affordable than transitioning to a competitor.
MarketLive ending support for Version 4
I just returned from the MarketLive Summit at Half Moon Bay, CA. The venue was lovely, but the mood was mixed. By April 2009, MarketLive will end support for Version 4 of its platform. Nearly half of its 150 customers now face an upgrade or move off of the platform.
Version 5 has been available since 2006, and the upgrade to get current is a costly and complex endeavor. Of course, telling clients they must move “up or out” by its very nature forces everyone to at least consider “out.” I met with many MarketLive clients at the event who are indeed considering alternatives.
I’m scheduling an executive briefing with MarketLive to gather more details. Stay tuned.
IBM client sues over ecommerce software
According to Paul McDouggal of InformationWeek, IBM is facing a $6 million lawsuit from Harry & David filed recently in U.S. District Court in Oregon.
The report claims that Harry & David had to settle claims with both NCR and Charles Hill for using IBM’s Websphere Commerce Server version 5.6, software which allegedly violated patents. The client also claims in the suit that IBM refused to indemnify them, thereby breaching contract.
Now there’s more than one side to every story. This article was first released this afternoon. So I’ll do some homework and post what I find. More to come. Stay tuned.
Venda relaunches their own web site
Venda.com revealed a fresh coat of paint this month, with a new web site of their own. It reveals more than 20 examples of retail sites they host on Venda’s software-as-a-service platform, including BBC Shop, DeBeers, Laura Ashley, Jurlique, Superdrug, and Urban Outfitters (UK).
I wish the Flash animation at the bottom of their client page linked to each site and wasn’t so darned tricky to control. But the design and content are much improved — with relevant information for prospective clients.