Information Technology Reference
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first worked at AT&T, there was a different payroll processing center for each division of
the company.
High Availability
Applications requiring high availability required “fault-tolerant” computers. These com-
puters had multiple CPUs, error-correcting RAM, and other technologies that were ex-
tremely expensive at the time. Fault-tolerant systems were niche products. Generally only
the military and Wall Street needed such systems. As a result they were usually priced out
of the reach of typical companies.
Costs
DuringthiseratheInternetwasnotbusiness-critical,andoutagesforinternalbusiness-crit-
ical systems could be scheduled because the customer base was a limited, known set of
people. When necessary, advanced reliability and scaling needs were addressed with very
expensive specialized hardware. However, businesses could easily calculate the costs of
any outages, do a risk analysis to understand what the budget for providing higher reliab-
ility was, and make an informed decision about how to proceed. These costs were under
control.
Scaling was handled through hardware upgrades, but compute requirements scaled in
predictable ways with the company's business. As the business grew, the budget for the
compute infrastructure grew, and upgrades could be planned and scheduled.
B.2 The First Web Era: The Bubble (1995-2000)
In the beginning of the first web era, web sites were relatively static repositories of linked
documents. The first corporate web sites were largely marketing literature—information
aboutthecompanyanditsproducts,pressreleases,joblistings,andcontactinformationfor
various customer-facing groups, such as sales and customer support. But many businesses
quickly realized the potential for conducting business over the Internet, and e-commerce
was born.
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