REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 12, 2004 — In Internet time, you really can hurry love. And thanks to Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET 2003 and Windows Server™
2003, millions of Match.com users will see just how fast cupid’s virtual arrow can travel this Valentine’s Day.
Microsoft Corp. today announced the addition of Match.com LP, a top 25 Web site, to a growing list of new customer implementations built on Microsoft technologies that are reaching new heights of business value. Match.com used Visual Studio .NET 2003 and ASP.NET running on Windows Server 2003 to update its transaction-intensive Web site, enabling it to eliminate close to 60 servers, double its Web site performance and maximize developer productivity. The new Match.com is deployed across just 45 servers running Windows Server 2003, down sharply from the 104 servers the previous implementation required.
“We’ve seen a huge business savings, and will continue to do so because we can offer extremely fast development cycles,”
said Jason Alexander, technical development lead at Match.com.
“Given the richness of the Microsoft .NET Framework and the productivity of Visual Studio .NET, we’re able to expand on our previous feature set and easily refactor, debug and maintain existing code.”
“Match.com needs to provide a highly available Web site that can cost-effectively meet customer expectations for new features and a fresh look,”
said Vic Gundotra, general manager of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft.
“ASP.NET has given Match.com the agility and flexibility needed to create a site that facilitates thousands of connections between its users each year.”
The site was previously built with ASP 3.0 and ran on Windows 2000 Server and Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0, but the Match.com development team found that the two-year-old implementation was more difficult to modify and debug than was desirable. The new implementation of the Match.com site was created using Visual Studio .NET 2003, specifically, Visual C#® .NET with ASP.NET Web Forms and Web services. Match.com accesses its SQL Server™
2000 database through ADO.NET and the SQL Server Managed Provider.
Match.com uses Web services to exchange data with internal and external partners, allowing it to easily integrate with differing and constantly changing architectures and platforms. The site serves more than 20 million page views a day, giving users round-the-clock access to information about Match.com’s millions of members. Upgrading to Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 also enables Match.com to better handle increased site traffic by saving about 74 percent of its network bandwidth.
“We’re a large international Web site. We have literally millions of hits every day, and growing with that user base is probably our biggest challenge,”
said Mike Presz, chief technology officer at Match.com.
“Obviously, who we select as our providers is critical. We partnered with Microsoft because we knew they’d be there to support us.”
Match.com on Display at Microsoft DevDays
The Match.com solution will be featured at Microsoft’s upcoming DevDays 2004, an event for professional developers taking place in cities across the United States. DevDays 2004 will kick off Feb. 23 in New York City, with additional events in another 31 cities throughout March. DevDays will provide developers with practical strategies for building secure smart client and Web applications using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/devdays2004/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software any time, any place and on any device.
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