Introduction
Primus Securities is an online trading company. The purpose of this paper is to review the decisions that must be made to launch and maintain an online trading company.
Hardware is the first element addressed; servers, system memory, and hosting decisions will be reviewed. The second portion is software and includes items such as design, security and data storage. To make the web site available to customers, connectivity issues and options will be examined. A comparison to sites such as Ameritrade, Charles Schwab and E-Trade is also included. A lot of customer expectations will have been established by those websites and Primus will have to include many of the same offerings and then add something extra to win customers.
Hardware
Platform
The first consideration in choosing the hardware for the online trading project at Primus is the server type and platform that will be used. There are three basic platforms that should be considered. “In the past, large websites have always run on large UNIX-based systems from companies such as Sun, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. However, with the increased stability and reliability of Microsoft Windows servers and the advent of the Linux operating system, more and more sites are turning to Intel-based servers” (Rayport-Jaworski, 2003, pp. 361-362).
The Intel-based servers are the best option for Primus, allowing it the flexibility to choose between the Windows Server operating system and the Linux operating system. The software options will be more extensive with this type of server and the cost of purchasing and maintaining them is less (Rayport-Jaworski, 2003, p. 362). The company will likely need three separate servers – a database server, an application server, and a web server. Considering the amount of software needed, this level of flexibility will surely provide an advantage.
System Power
For purposes of this analysis, system power refers to system memory, CPU speed, storage capacity, and disk access speed. The requirements are somewhat different depending on which server is being considered.
Primus should expect that the number of transactions passing through its online trading website has the potential to be massive. Therefore, the database server’s specifications are scrutinized the closest. This machine will need to have a huge amount of storage capacity and will need to utilize the latest technolo...
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...us. Primus has the opportunity to see what the competition is offering, how the critics have rated the sites, how the market has reacted, etc. Learning from others’ mistakes and innovations is one of the smartest moves that Primus can make, and the research and analysis cost is minimal.
Ultimately, the analysis from this paper is an excellent blueprint for building and maintaining an online trading website which appeals to customers and leads to growth and profitability for Primus.
References
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