The infrastructure for the easyCar operation has been developed in partnership with HP, one of the world’s leading computer companies.

In December 1999, HP was contracted to develop a dedicated e-commerce environment for easyCar using the latest Internet technologies. The environment includes booking, fleet management and business management components, all of which are Web-based. As part of the work, HP’s consultants designed, built and tested the easyCar Web site. They also integrated the site with an Internet bank to enable customers to make secure credit-card payments.

Why did easyCar choose to work with HP rather than another big computer company? Philip Jones, easyCar’s IT director, summarises the reasons: “In HP, we found a partner who was willing to share the risks and rewards of getting our business up-and-running. HP offered us much more than just a hardware platform and a software development solution.”

One of the key services that differentiated HP from its competitors was the HP hosting facility in Bristol, UK. This is a dedicated, fully managed e-commerce facility, where customers have separate business systems that nevertheless share key elements such as firewalls and bandwidth connections. This approach provides easyCar with an exceptionally cost-effective way of meeting its needs for security, resilience, scalability and bandwidth.

Another factor in HP’s favour was its willingness to commit to easyCar’s timetable for developing the infrastructure. Says Jones: “Not many companies would have signed up to our aggressive time scales, especially given the complexity of the application. But HP was more than just a supplier: it had a vested interest in the success of the project, and its people worked hard to understand the needs of our business.”

As a result of HP’s dedication, the initial phase of the work was completed in only three months, with the Web site going live in March 2000.

If you would like to know more about HP and how it can help companies implement e-commerce solutions, then visit the HP Web site at http://www.hp.com/ssg/consulting/index.html.