[ic] CSP (Commerce Solutions Provider)

[Cameron Germein]

Interbase is a Borland SQL DB (off memory), whereas Interchange is an
ecommerce backend mega super funkdafied
more-flavour-than-you-can-see-hear-taste-or-smell piece of software used for
creating ecommerce websites. :)

----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Bisaillon <bbisaillon@pmail.net>
To: Interchange Mailing List <interchange-users@lists.akopia.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 10:19 AM
Subject: [ic] CSP (Commerce Solutions Provider)


> Me and some friends were thinking on setting up a business here in Canada.
> We'll be hosting local (or remote) businesses' websites on our servers. We
> are probably going to go with a High Speed DSL solution (equivalent to a
> fractional T1) from Bell. We would get 32 static ips, DNS, a Cisco router,
> etc. with that. It's only going to cost us just less than 1/3 of the cost
of
> a full T1 in this area (here it costs 2200$/month canadian). We as
students
> just finishing up at college don't want to spend too much but we would
> really like to provide more than just a simple website for local (or
remote)
> businesses. We want to provide some EBusiness/ECommerce solutions as well.
> I've been searching and searching for hours and days looking for cheap
> solutions or some way to implement this. I came across some link on the
> Internet that pointed me to Red Hat's site and I read about Interbase. I
was
> amazed! I recently made my own Linux distribution that will basically just
> run purely as a server. I'm going to compile the Interbase code on it and
> see what it can do. I already have the latest versions of Apache, MySQL,
> OpenSSL and PHP installed and working on my distribution. I compiled them
> from scratch. I also have the latest version of Perl sitting on my system
> here. I haven't programmed in Perl before but I've done stuff in various
> other programming languages. Basically, small useful utilities I coded.
The
> biggest thing I probably coded was my own chat server (very basic one but
it
> didn't support message relaying yet or a database system) in Erlang. I'm
not
> in college to learn programming. I pretty much do it on my own. I'm in my
> 3rd year of Computer Network Technology and after this I'll have two
> diplomas come April/2001. Anyways, back on topic. I wanted to know if any
> other sites are using Interchange right now? How stable is it? What are
some
> things I should consider when setting this up? I suppose I'll find a lot
of
> answers in the documentation when I read it and set it up tomorrow.
However,
> I'm interested in knowing how stable this is and if it's worthit for us to
> go ahead with this. The best part is that this software is FREE and I mean
> we are college students that don't have a whole lot of money. Therefore,
if
> we can set this thing up on our Linux servers it'd be great for us! Plus,
> any outside customers on the Internet such as U.S. customers would benefit
> from our services because to U.S. customers, canadian pricing is much
> cheaper. For example, if I roll out some services for say 24.95$/mth + GST
> (7%) it would cost U.S. customers peanuts. We'd be raking in the cash as
> well once we get a good customer base. We are planning on providing fault
> tolerance using RAID and we're going to talk to Bell about fault tolerance
> involving the routers. We still have a lot of background work to do on
legal
> issues that might be involved with our business. However, if we can get
this
> thing off the ground we'll definitely be sitting pretty! If Interchange is
> going to be rolled out on a large scale (maybe it's already really popular
> but I'm not sure) then I don't see why I wouldn't want to get more in
depth
> training on it unless of course I can figure this stuff out on my own.
>
> Basically, do you all think this is a good idea? We have all the machines
> already, we have the operating system and the software (including
> Interchange), we'd get bandwidth provided by Bell for a reasonable cost
> (449$/mth canadian) and all we'd really have to worry about is Marketing
> etc. However, in this city no one has done what we plan to do. We can
really
> get the ball rolling and really compete effectively with local businesses
> here. Most businesses here are providing dial-up accounts etc. and Bell is
> charging them an arm and a leg for reselling bandwidth. We decided if you
> can't compete with Bell run with them and the result would be much
cheaper.
> We will be running this out of my friend's home as well. He has a bunch of
> security setup there and all we really need now is some UPS' and make sure
> that everything is insured. As for important data we'll be backing it up
and
> putting it in a safe place (perhaps a safe or something? maybe even look
> into some security service). For example, if our server went down we don't
> want to lose all of the financial information related to the businesses we
> host otherwise we'd be in big trouble. Anyways, you can sort of see what
> we've been thinking of here. We were also thinking on establishing our
> customer base first (and that won't be a problem because we already have
> people waiting for us to get up and running! they're eager!) and of course
> on the Internet we can also establish an international clientele.
>
> All in all, if anyone on this list can provide me with more information to
> help me along please do so. I'm kinda fuzzy on the whole digital
certificate
> thing too! I guess we'd have to signup for a digital certificate with some
> sort of service? Also, I was thinking about SSL and all the services that
> currently don't support it and I was thinking of using stunnel to pipe my
> services through it for more security. Is that also a good idea? I know
it's
> not related to Interchange but I guess it could be.
>
> Thank you in advance all for your replies! I'm sure I'll get some...
>
>
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