Casa del Libro - a not-so-tough choice

Casa del Libro, at the height of the dot-com bubble, had long been established. They were figuring on entering the online market, and had bought the best and fastest (and the most expensive) servers and software. Then came the dot-com bust. Budget cuts. Downsizing. Lowered growth forecasts. And a tough choice.

Do they soldier on with the IT platform already acquired, or do they change course midstream and go in for something cheaper?

The context: They'd acquired top-of-the line systems - multiple Sun servers running a Unix variant, a high-end database, a search engine, firewalls, load-balancing.... Basically, they were prepared to handle a lot of traffic. Inevitably, this high performance came with high development and maintenance costs.

The alternative: They could go in for a cheaper solution, using Microsoft software running on HP servers. This would be much cheaper to develop and maintain at the cost lower performance.

The choice:I'd recommend going for the cheap solution !!
* It would be up and running much earlier.
* It was simpler. I can't stress the importance of the KISS funda enough !!
* Fine. The cheap platform wouldn't have been all that great. It wouldn't support a lot of traffic. But then, this shouldn't really have been a concern. The forecasts were lowered, right? Then why spend a lot of money for traffic that would probably be non-existent?
* There was talk of 'downsizing'. If you have fewer people, then you pick the solution that is easier to maintain.

By the time the website's traffic had grown enough to justify the need for the high-end system, it would've already been out-of-date. It would make more sense to opt for the cheap(er) solution, grow the business while adapting and fine-tuning the processes and business model according to their learning curve. Later, when ready, go for a high-end system. Sometime in the future. Not now.

Fast forward to the present: On a side note, would I recommend the same strategy had they been starting up now? NO. Absolutely not!!
Now, with cloud computing, and solutions like Salesforce.com, they could have actually got the website running 'fast + good + cheap' !!