4-page Case Study - Posted 11/14/2006

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TicketsNow

Rapidly Growing Online Business Engages Workforce with New Hardware, Software

To maintain the innovation and attention to customer service that in just 13 years grew TicketsNow from a one-man shop to a $250 million enterprise, the company needed a more reliable and manageable Web site and IT infrastructure. The Chicago-area provider of tickets and related event services also needed greater flexibility and performance so that developers could respond rapidly to customer requests in a competitive and fast-moving industry. TicketsNow developed and deployed an updated Web site and IT infrastructure based on HP BladeSystem servers and the Microsoft® server product portfolio. Since deployment, TicketsNow has vastly automated its order processing, enjoyed server availability levels of up to four 9s, and witnessed a 25 percent rise in customer conversion rates. The company is well-positioned for continuing growth based on reliable and ready solutions from HP and Microsoft.

Situation

In barely over a dozen years, TicketsNow, which offers tickets for events ranging from NASCAR to Phantom of the Opera, grew from a one-person operation run from an apartment to a nationwide enterprise with 270 employees and $250 million in 2005 revenues. The Chicago-area company’s expansion was especially dramatic in the early 2000s, when average daily transactions topped 70,000 and yearly growth rates approached 100 percent; and by late 2006, the company was looking forward to moving into a new, 70,000-square-foot corporate headquarters.

Our sights are set on becoming a billion-dollar company, and now we have the hardware and software in place to help get us there. Mike Domek Chief Executive Officer, TicketsNow

“We’re always open to what our customers like and don’t like, and to adapting accordingly,” Domek says. “For example, we provide real-time status of customer Web orders, stay in touch through e-mail, keep close track of a given customer’s favorite events or types of events, and make it easy for customers to submit event reviews. We work hard to create a sense of community among our customers through personalization, customization, localization, and informing customers of upcoming events in their area.”

Another TicketsNow differentiator is product innovation, that is, continually implementing new capabilities into the Web site. “When customers come to the site they want to see something new, something more interesting than they might have seen on their last visit,” Domek says. “We have to make our Web site appealing in this way, because in this business if you’re not moving ahead you’re being left behind.”

It’s not just what the customer sees on the Web site, either. “What goes on behind the scenes is equally important in keeping our customers happy,” Domek says. “We must work continually to simplify and standardize business processes, for example, to make sure transactions are handled as rapidly as possible. This not only keeps customers happy, it also makes staff more productive, contributing directly to the bottom line.”

Solution

None of this comes easy, however. Maintaining superlative customer service, innovating the Web site, and streamlining business processes can be a daunting challenge for a company that has spent nearly its entire existence in rapid-growth mode. This is why, in early 2006, Domek and other TicketsNow executives began thinking seriously about replacing the company’s existing server hardware and software.

“We felt that our old architecture could not go to where our business was taking us,” says Frank Giannantonio, Chief Technology Officer. “We needed to increase capacity rapidly and ensure a reliable, serviceable, and highly scalable Web site that our customers could come to any hour of the day or night. But we needed more than an updated Web site. We needed an entirely new environment to elevate our brand and support our brand promise.”

Such needs led Domek, Giannantonio, and their colleagues to adopt a solution based on products from vendors the executives already knew and trusted: hardware from HP and software from Microsoft. “We chose HP and Microsoft because we could count on them to provide best-in-class technology using a reliable, optimized, and consistent approach,” Giannantonio explains. “We were confident that a strategic alliance of HP, Microsoft, and their partners would put TicketsNow in the best position to stay on top of growth—our growth and the growth of this industry overall.”

The difference between our prior Web site and infrastructure and what we have now is the difference between night and day. Gene Golden Vice President of Information Technology, TicketsNow

“Thanks to the highly integrated nature of the Visual Studio® .NET development system and other tools in the Microsoft .NET Framework, we managed the production deployment in a single three-day weekend,” Giannantonio says. “And that’s for a project that I would rate 9.5 on a complexity scale of 1 to 10.”

Today, TicketsNow uses a network of 60 HP ProLiant BL35p and BL45p BladeSystem servers for its production hosting, Web servers, application servers, and database servers. The database servers rely on an HP Storage Works Modular Smart Array 1500 storage area network and handle an average of 3.6 terabytes of data daily. The company also uses HP ProLiant DL360 and DL380 rack servers for development, quality assurance, and staging.

As for software, for its server operating system TicketsNow uses Windows Server® 2003 Professional Edition, and on the desktops the company relies on the Windows® XP Professional Edition operating system and Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003.

In addition, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server provides collaboration services and Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 supports project management for all key IT projects. To manage its entire IT environment, addressing potential problems with CPU utilization, memory leaks, or the like, TicketsNow uses Microsoft Systems Management Server and HP OpenView.

Benefits

For Domek, Giannantonio, and their colleagues at TicketsNow, the updated Web site, database, and overall IT environment have been a tremendous boon for the company. “Everyone is thrilled with the new Web site,” Giannantonio says. “People cheered the moment it went live and have been commenting ever since on how well it represents our brand and product and gives everyone here a sense of pride.”

This is especially the case, adds Gene Golden, Vice President of Information Technology, when staffers observe rising rates of conversion—when TicketsNow Web site visitors turn into TicketsNow customers. “In the first month after deployment, we saw a nearly 25 percent rise in the conversion rate,” he says. “The difference between our prior Web site and infrastructure and what we have now is the difference between night and day.”

“Highly Flexible Infrastructure”
For Golden, four primary factors—flexibility, performance, reliability, and scalability—make the new IT infrastructure such a powerful foundation for helping TicketsNow serve its customers and keep its brand promise. 

As Golden emphasizes, flexibility is the hallmark of the HP BladeSystem servers, from IT and business perspectives alike. “Running HP BladeSystem servers with Microsoft server and development software enables us to maximize utilization—with just the number of servers we need for a given level of operations and the flexibility to expand rapidly and cost-effectively when we need more compute power,” Golden says. “In turn, we can respond to business needs rapidly, a vital capability in a competitive industry where we’re in a race for dominance.”

For example, just a few weeks after the new Web site launch, TicketsNow added functionality to offer customer services far beyond just the delivery of event tickets, services including reservations for limousines, recommendations on restaurants, information on nearby parking, weather forecasts, reviews of similar events, and so on. “These are the kinds of services that help us engage customers in the brand and keep them coming back to TicketsNow,” Golden says. “It’s especially valuable that we can implement such functionalities quickly based on customer feedback, all thanks to our highly flexible infrastructure.”

Higher Performance, Lower Costs
“We are absolutely thrilled by the performance of this architecture,” says Golden, whose team wasted little time translating that performance into a fundamental business benefit: processing customer orders more quickly. “In the past, handling an order, even over the Internet, was very manually intensive, but now we process more than 90 percent of our transactions automatically,” Domek reports. “This saves significant staff costs and helps us to provide customers their tickets faster.”

Further automating the order processing, in turn, translates into happier customers, says Lisa Carlin, Director of Operations, Call Center. “In the past, a customer might wait on the phone for seven or eight minutes from the time they confirmed their order to its placement,” she says. “Now this happens in less than a minute.”

On a related note, it’s an exceedingly rare TicketsNow customer who must wait longer than anticipated because of a malfunctioning server. That’s because of what Golden calls the “excellent” reliability of the new infrastructure, particularly the HP ProLiant rack servers used for development, quality assurance, and staging.

“Before, server availability was about 75 percent and today it’s nearly four 9s,” Golden points out. “This level of reliability makes my life easier, and it makes life easier for our IT professionals who spend virtually no time at all having to deal with down systems.”

Giannantonio concurs. “This highly reliable infrastructure is essential for helping us  respond to the demands of growth,” he says. “And we are all about growing the business.”

Headroom for Growth
Indeed, it’s the demands of rapid and unrelenting growth that also make the scalability of the new infrastructure vital for TicketsNow.

“Before, the servers running the data warehouse and database were operating at 50 percent capacity,” Giannantonio explains. “Today, even with our increased volumes, we are using just 5 to 10 percent of our capacity. With this kind of headroom we’re really well positioned for growth. Moreover, if necessary we can deploy new hardware in minutes—thanks to the HP BladeSystem server architecture and its support for dynamic resource allocation, the HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array storage area network and its extensive support for hot-plug component replacement, and our easily reusable code base thanks to the .NET Framework.”

Scalable software makes both system support and Web-site updates far easier and more cost-effective, Domek adds. “Because of functionalities we’ve added, the site’s code base is probably larger than the old one, yet we’re able to support it with fewer staff members,” he says. “This is partly because updates are so easy that they can be made by the same individual who’s handling the front-end side of the update, for example, a writer or marketing person. Many such updates that used to require IT involvement just don’t anymore.”

And this, Giannantonio adds, is invaluable in the competitive niche that TicketsNow inhabits—for the business as a whole and for employees as well. “Being a marketing-driven business, the only constant at TicketsNow is change, and 50 or 60 Web site updates in a week is nothing unusual,” he says. “Making frequent changes is not only easier and less costly, it’s also good for employee morale. There’s nothing better for a developer than to be able to go into the code and satisfy a business need quickly.”

Valuable Partnership
It’s not only the new HP- and Microsoft-based Web site and server infrastructure that are making a difference for TicketsNow. It’s also additional software solutions from both HP and Microsoft that help make the infrastructure more reliable, manageable, and scalable.

“HP OpenView vastly simplifies server management, helping us to head off potential server problems before they become serious,” Giannantonio says. “In addition, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft Office Project help employees collaborate far more easily and keep tasks on target and within budget. Moreover, Microsoft Systems Management Server streamlines deployment of new software, most recently enabling us to deploy a new desktop image to employees in just 10 minutes.”

Because of the central role that HP and Microsoft technologies play at TicketsNow, the close working partnership of the two companies has also turned out to be a big benefit. “With the HP/Microsoft Frontline Partnership Alliance, we can get virtually all the tools, technologies, and expertise that we need for our IT infrastructure from a single source,” Golden says. “What’s more, HP and Microsoft fully understand our process, our strategy, and our goals. We can count on them, and this I know from times we have called on them with an urgent matter and they have met the challenge without fail.”

Engaging All Employees
For Domek, having the products and the people of HP and Microsoft behind him and his colleagues is all the more important as TicketsNow looks to the future. For example, one short-term goal is to move increasingly toward a fully online business model.

“Currently we conduct about 80 percent of our business online and the rest through the phone center, but with the new user interface and architecture we’ll do more online, to become more efficient and, ultimately, more competitive,” Domek says. “Our sights are set on becoming a billion-dollar company, and now we have the hardware and software in place to help get us there.”

As Carlin points out, Domek and his executive colleagues are not the only ones with a billion-dollar dream in their sights. “It’s every one of our 270-plus employees—from customer-care representatives who are processing orders more efficiently to senior managers who can implement customer-requested programs right away,” she says. “Having the right technology infrastructure helps engage employees in the dream and will help us all to make it happen.”

Microsoft .NET
Microsoft .NET is software that connects people, information, systems, and devices through the use of Web services. Web services are a combination of protocols that enable computers to work together by exchanging messages. Web services are based on the standard protocols of XML, SOAP, and WSDL, which allow them to interoperate across platforms and pro¬gramming languages.

.NET is integrated across Microsoft products and services, helping to provide the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, secure solutions with Web services. These solutions provide agile business integration and the promise of information anytime, anywhere, on any device.

For more information about Microsoft .NET and Web services, please visit these Web sites:
www.microsoft.com/net
msdn.microsoft.com/webservices

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about TicketsNow products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.ticketsnow.com

For more information about HP products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.hp.com