W
DNA C
S
Published: March 2000
Before January 2000, two companies —Delphi Forums and Well Engaged, LLC—were the top providers of Internet community solutions on the market. All of that changed when these companies decided to take the market by storm with a merger that created Prospero
Technologies.
Prospero has lived up to its founders’ high aspirations. The company is now the #1 provider of
Internet community solutions in the United States and counts a number of movers and shakers in the business world as their clients. FOXNEWS.com, Hasbro Interactive, and Politics.com are a sample of the clientele Prospero supports with their hosted Web community infrastructure.
Prospero produces over 6 million page views a day for their clients and that number is increasing rapidly. The company grew an astounding 245 percent in 1999 and is projected to break the 400 million page views a month marker by the end of this year. Dan Bruns, President and CEO of
Prospero Technologies describes the merger, “Delphi and Well Engaged combine to form a powerful new player that will provide crucial infrastructure solutions to help Web businesses become successful.”
The merger demanded that the newly formed Prospero Technologies define its business goals and choose an IT platform that would best achieve its goals. While evaluating the software options available, groups from both of the original companies took a close look at their past
Customer Profile
Prospero Technologies provides community infrastructure to over 200 well-known clients, enabling them to attract, engage, and understand their customers, and benefit from the interaction. Prospero is itself the result of a recent merger between Delphi Forums and
Well Engaged, LLC —both leaders in the Internet community marketplace.
Business Situation
Prospero Technologies depends on software that is reliable, scalable, and cost effective to provide the best online community solution available at competitive prices.
Solution
The Microsoft Windows DNA platform was chosen by
Prospero Technologies in
January 2000. The tools and technologies in Windows
DNA meet the criteria
Prospero required for rapid development in a common desktop and server environment.
Software and Services
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Microsoft Internet Information
Server 4.0
Microsoft Transaction Server
2.0
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0
Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0
COM
Scenario
B2B
Hosted Solutions
 Web communities

experience in software and development. Delphi Forums had standardized on the Microsoft platform three years ago. Previously, the company had worked on an expensive VAX system, which hindered their ability to turn a profit and to grow. As Prospero Technologies Chief
Technology Officer Chip Matthes explains, “Our old VAX system was not cost-effective. For example, the tools required to run it were very expensive.” He adds, “To illustrate our high costs, maintenance for the VAX ran about $20,000 a month and our old software and hardware costs only added to that.”
Like many other companies today, Prospero views return on investment as a major criterion in choosing a software platform. The company recognized that in order to reach its business goals quickly, leveraging existing applications and code would be crucial, so it put a high value on the scalability and flexibility of the platforms evaluated.
Prospero chose to build their solution on the Microsoft Windows DNA platform. The three-tier architecture of the solution runs on 20 Windows NT-based servers and 10 database servers that store a total of 500 GB of data. The Visual Studio development environment allowed Prospero’s team of twenty developers to work quickly and efficiently towards their objectives. Specifically,
Visual InterDev Web development system was used to build the numerous Active Server Pages the site relies on. COM object development was done in Visual C++, as was the development of the filters for the Web servers and other ISAPI programming. Visual Basic was utilized to build an application that migrates messages
—Prospero expects to use it in the future for additional COM object development.
COM objects provide load balancing, caching, and queuing. Prospero is able to reuse the same set of objects for all of their customers, growing their return on investment in regular intervals as their client base increases. Matthes sees the benefits of using COM+ programming model well into the future. As he explains, “We expect COM objects to help in our future upgrades because they allow you to isolate and distribute logic
—making upgrades faster and easier. We also look to
COM objects for performance, which is better t han the performance we get from scripts.”
The presentation tier of Prospero’s three-tier solution utilizes ASP for almost all of the content and features that Prospero’s clients’ users view on the online communities. The communities’ features
—including chat rooms, message boards, user profiles, and polls—are optimized to run on Internet Explorer and Netscape versions 3.0 and above. Special feature and functionality enhancements are available to users of Internet Explorer and Netscape versions 4.0 and above.
Prospero is currently working to better define their business logic architecture. At this time, as
Matthes explains, “We’re primarily using stored procedures at the database level, in addition to scripts that perform business logic.” The business logic is performing a host of functions for
Prospero. Multiple Web sites are supported simultaneously with all of them depending on 24 by 7 access. Load balancing, transaction analysis, self-tuning, data analysis, security checks, and applications management are also performed.
Prospero’s data tier is based on a foundation of SQL Server 7.0, which runs on a four-way Intel machine. Prospero is enjoying the performance they are getting from utilizing caching on SQL
Server. “We’ve been doing a lot of caching with COM objects to minimize database calls,” says
“We expect COM objects to help in our future upgrades because they allow you to isolate and distribute logic —making upgrades faster and easier. We also look to
COM objects for performance, which is better than the performance we get from scripts.
Chip Matthes
Chief Technology Officer
Prospero Technologies

Matthes. “The fact that we can cache data, the fact that the system has things like persistent connections so we don’t have to make extra database calls works really well. “
Matthes adds, “Our next big move is into queuing, which we’re just analyzing now.” Matthes is hopeful that the move to integrate queuing will take Prospero to new levels of reliability and scalability in the future.
Turning a profit on the Internet and quickly reaching business goals is a challenge all businesses face. In order to position itself for success, each company must factor cost benefits into its planning from its initial plann ing stages. “One of the main reasons we started working on the
Microsoft platform was because it was very costeffective,” remarks Matthes. “
Implementing the
Microsoft platform lowered labor needs for our development team and costs associated with the whol e system.”
The scalability factor also relates to overall costs for Prospero. As Matthes comments, “Another consideration for us in deciding on a platform was the fact that we’re growing really fast.
Supporting that growth would have cost sub stantial amounts on Delphi Forum’s former VAX system.” Working on the Windows DNA platform allows Prospero to add to their system incrementally as needed
—an affordable method of ensuring ongoing scalability.
Hiring qualified, let alone highly skilled, developers is an increasingly difficult challenge in today’s flourishing high-tech market. Working on the Microsoft platform, and in particular, working with the
Microsoft Visual Studio development environment, provides Prospero with an edge on the competition. “There are a lot of developers out there who are experienced with the Microsoft platform
,” says Matthes, “which makes it much easier for us to find qualified developers. This helps our company as a whole .
”
Further, developer knowledge can be leveraged into more than one area when working on a common platform of Microsoft software throughout an organization, as Prospero does. “One of the main reasons we chose the Microsoft platform was because it allows us to use a common platform from the desktop to the server,” explains Matthes. “If someone knows how to use a
Windows NT-based machine they can be involved in server development, adding to our return on investment. It doesn’t require separate knowledge.” Prospero also finds that ramp-up time and training costs are reduced as a result of the common Microsoft platform.
Utilizing Microsoft Active Server Pages throughout the site enables Prospero to benefit even more from their pool of 20 developers, all of whom are all well versed in Microsoft technologies.
“We provide almost all of our features and content with ASP,” says Matthes. “We are able to turn things over very quickly and we can hire fewer developers to do the work.”
Currently, Microsoft servers support 6 million page views a day for Prospero customers. That translates into a remarkable 159 million page views during the month of May alone. Prospero has projected that by December 2000 their software will have to support 400 million page views a month. Reliability concerns go hand in hand with scalability projections. As Robin Waldman,
Prospero’s Vice President, Marketing explains, “The site and supporting Microsoft software need to be reliable enough to meet Prospero's commitment to 99.8% uptime.”
“One of the main reasons we started working on the Microsoft platform was because it was very cost-effective.
Implementing the
Microsoft platform lowered labor needs for our development team and costs associated with the whole system.”
Chip Matthes
Chief Technology Officer
Prospero Technologies

Microsoft software and the distributed Web site Prospero has built on the Windows DNA platform promises to meet Prospero’s stringent requirements without a hitch. “SQL Server is a big piece of our scalability planning,” says Matthes. “The integration between SQL Server 7.0 and the Web servers, along with SQL Server’s ability to distribute data, makes us confident in our system’s ability to scale out and support our growing clientele.” Presently, Prospero’s SQL Server database stores over 20 million messages for the 14.7 million registered users of Prospero’s online communities.
Matthe s remarks that, “Prospero absolutely plans to add to their Microsoft offerings in the future.”
As Prospero runs almost entirely on Microsoft software, the company’s IT pros identify the products’ interoperability as a big selling point. “The common Microsoft products make it much easier to manage our technology,” points out Roger Glovsky, Prospero’s Director of Strategic
Programs. In the works are plans to possibly move to the Windows 2000 platform and to integrate
Microsoft Message Queuing. Matthes would definitely recommend a Microsoft solution to companies building largescale Web sites. As he says, “It’s the right set of tools.”
"Microsoft Windows DNA is the most comprehensive, integrated platform for building and deploying applications for the Business Internet. The core of Windows DNA is Windows 2000, an operating system with built-in Internet services that enable developers to focus on adding value to their applications rather than wasting time on the underlying plumbing. Other components include Visual Studio, SQL Server, the
COM+ component and programming model and other application services, all best-of-breed products that leverage the deepest developer talent pool in the industry. The Windows DNA platform is the fastest, easiest path to developing and deploying serious applications for the Business Internet.”
For more information about Microsoft products or services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada information Centre at (800) 563-9048. Outside the 50
United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information via the
World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/ http://www.prospero.com
© 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual Basic, Visual Studio, and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein might be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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"The site and supporting
Microsoft software need to be reliable enough to meet Prospero's commitment to 99.8% uptime."
Robin Waldman
Vice President, Marketing
Prospero Technologies