11-29-2007, 10:00 AM
Quote:Overstock.com was one of the most heavily hit Web sites by the crush of holiday shoppers looking for bargains during the four day span from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. It also was among those that performed exceptionally well under pressure.
Was the success due to investments in technology? Sure, that helped. But the biggest investment and benefit, said CEO Patrick Byrne, is a newly expanded internal workforce of Java developers that rehauled the site around a Web service-oriented architecture to allow for rapid upgrades in response to consumer activity. The new site went live last month after about a year of development.
"We had three developers on staff three or four years ago; now we have over 40 developers," Byrne said in an interview. "We found it's worth it to pay up for more expensive and more serious people." ...
full article: http://www.informationweek.com/news/show...=204300504