eBay 2001 Annual Report Download - page 13

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suggestions for worthwhile charities through the eBay website, where charity auctions and other unique
promotions are held to support such causes
OÉine Businesses
Our oÉine businesses include ButterÑelds Auctioneers Corporation and Kruse, Inc. d/b/a Kruse
International, which provide traditional auction services. ButterÑelds was established in 1865 and is the
largest auction house headquartered on the West coast of the United States specializing in Ñne art,
antiques and collectibles with sales galleries in San Francisco and Los Angeles and regional representatives
located throughout the Midwest and Western United States. Kruse, which operates in the state of Indiana,
was established in 1971 and is one of the world's leading collector car auction companies.
Site Operations and Technology
The eBay platform is composed of a scalable user interface and transaction processing system based
on internally developed proprietary software. The eBay platform supports the sale process, including
notifying users via email when they initially register for the service, place a successful bid, are outbid, list
an item for sale and when an auction ends. The platform also sends daily status updates to any active
sellers and bidders. The platform maintains user registration information, billing accounts, current auctions
and historical listings. All information is regularly archived for record-keeping and analysis purposes. The
platform regularly updates a text-based search engine with the titles and descriptions of new items, as well
as pricing and bidding updates for active items. The platform also updates the seller's billing account every
time an item is listed, a feature is selected or an auction closes with a bid in excess of the seller-speciÑed
minimum bid. The platform sends electronic invoices to all sellers via email on a regular (at least
monthly) basis. In addition to these features, the eBay service also supports a number of community
bulletin board and chat areas where users and eBay customer support personnel can interact.
Our platform is designed around industry standard architectures to reduce downtime in the event of
outages or catastrophic occurrences. The eBay service provides 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week
availability, subject to a maintenance period during one night each week. Substantially all of our system
hardware is hosted at the Exodus facilities in Santa Clara, California, the Qwest Communications facilities
in Sunnyvale, California, and/or the Sprint Communications facilities in Sacramento, California, each of
which provide redundant communications lines and emergency power backup. These systems and
operations are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, Öoods, Ñres, power loss,
telecommunication failures and similar events. They are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, intentional acts
of vandalism and to potential disruption if the operators of these facilities have Ñnancial diÇculties.
In early 2002, Cable and Wireless plc acquired substantially all of Exodus's data center assets under
Exodus' Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. We expect that these data center assets, now owned by Cable
and Wireless plc, will continue to be branded using the Exodus name. We do not maintain fully redundant
systems or alternative providers of hosting services, and we do not carry business interruption insurance
suÇcient to compensate us for losses that may occur. Despite any precautions we may take, the
occurrence of a natural disaster, a decision to close a facility we are using without adequate notice for
Ñnancial reasons or other unanticipated problems at any of the Exodus, Qwest or Sprint facilities could
result in lengthy interruptions in our services. In addition, the failure by Exodus, Qwest or Sprint to
provide our required data communications capacity could result in interruptions in our service. Any
damage to or failure of our systems could result in interruptions in our service. Interruptions in our service
will reduce our net revenues and proÑts, and our future net revenues and proÑts will be harmed if our
users believe that our system is unreliable.
Our platform consists of Sun database servers running Oracle relational database management
applications with a mix of Sun and Hitachi storage devices and a suite of Pentium-based Internet servers
running the Windows NT and Linux operating systems. We use Resonate Inc.'s and F5 Inc.'s load
balancing systems and our own redundant servers along with select software from Veritas Inc. to provide
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