So there's this great book out there called "Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World" in which the author Mark Kurlansky chronicles how this humble fish in its own right toppled empires, gave rise to new economies and generally provided us everything that we have today, including the Internet. Seriously, no joke. Check it out. The book's been out there for some 10-15 years, but what brought it to mind recently was Kurlansky's factual, neat debunking of Christopher Columbus from explorer and discoverer of the New World to just another party crasher in funny pants.

 I won't do the story justice here, but to paraphrase Kurlansky, the Basques in Spain had been known since before the year 1000 for their salted cod fish, which curiously did not live in the home waters of Spain. Sales of cod received a nice tail wind when the Catholic Church decried that only cold meats could be eaten on lean days of observance, which included Fridays, all days during Lent and few odd days of observance thrown in for good measure. Lots of people eating cod. Lots of happy Basques. Then, in 1497, sometime during Columbus's five-year victory lap of Europe for stumbling on the New World while looking for Asia, a French explorer "discovered" the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and claimed it for France. It may have been tough to see the French flag flying though, what with a 1,000 Basque fishing boats clouding the view.

So what does this have to do with the software heavyweights? Well, apparently they've recently discovered that on-demand is how software will be delivered to the enterprise. And in brave proclamations both have set their flag to the continent. Um, guys? Did you hear that there's, like, a whole industry around this stuff? In an announcement on June 10th John Wookey, SAP 's new head of on-demand software applications for large companies, said that SAP would be releasing on-demand applications in "waves" to complement existing SAP business applications. Just last May, Larry Ellison, of Oracle and boating fame, quipped that on-demand segment was growing very slowly and in not so many words was the poor barefooted cousin of the licensed applications business. Seems Ellison is reversing fields: last Wednesday in an earnings call Ellison stated that Oracle plans to be #1 in on-demand applications. Interesting. Wonder if Wookey's move from Oracle head of applications and Ellison confidant to SAP last year played a role here? Seriously, this stuff has more twists than an episode of Lost.

Meanwhile, as the software giants posture, those of us who have been living, building, breathing on-demand for the last 10 years are just sitting here on the beach, eating fish.

This week's conference kicked off with a great address by Patrick Byrne, CEO, Overstock.com. With the theme of "Rising Above - Not Just Surviving the Economic Storm" Patrick talked about life at Overstock, the history of his company, and how he predicted the economic downfall. You heard it right, he predicted the downfall and he has the evidence to prove it and you can read all about it at www.deepcapture.com. So besides his deep battle with Wall Street, he helped laid out some basic rules to follow on how to survive this storm. The two main take-a-ways I took from his talk:

• Control Expenses
• Outsource areas you are not GREAT at

What I find to be most interesting is that at a high level these two options would seem contradictory, but if you think about it they actually correlate very well. While controlling expenses can seem very broad and obvious to most - Patrick made it a point to talk specifically about expenses that effect your balance sheet (capital expenses, payroll, etc.). In a rough and tumble economy it is so important to conserve cash. A good way to conserve cash is to outsource technology that you are not GREAT at (hosting, infrastructure management, etc). Overall some great points, thanks Patrick.

Another great session today was in Track B and the theme was around handling and managing the web, as it continues to gain importance. The two speakers while focusing on different aspects of the web's importance drove home many good points.

Kevin Hillstrom, President, MineThatData focused mainly on asking the audience a series of multiple choice questions that focused on multichannel, social media, email campaigns and more. The questions and audience participation really helped to drive Kevin's point home that each individual business leverages the web in different ways, and that it is important to decide which is best for your company. A great example of this was when he asked about selling through last season's items - depending on if you were store based or catalog based there were two distinct answers. Catalog based companies preferred to direct market in an email showcasing the discounted products, while store-based sites preferred to create sales/outlet categories and market the site.

Lou Weiss, Chief Marketing Officer, Vitamin Shoppe the second presenter, focused on creating a united front across all channels. It was great that he was upfront and admitted that his company "got it." Meaning they understood and made it a priority to roll the direct business in with the stores to create a unified Vitamin Shoppe to their customers no matter what channel they shopped. He brought up a couple great ways to integrate the store channel with the direct channel, and the best part was that they had nothing to do with technology.

• Talk in retailer/catalog terms. Lou shared a story about how this related to Vitamin Shoppe. When he first took responsibility of the web store, he was jumping up and down about the number of products out of stock on the site - with no response or help from the organization. After spending time walking through the brick and mortar stores and realizing that when there were empty shelves in the store the CEO would say "looks like the store is going out of business." Lou took that to heart and started saying "looks like the web store is going out of business," and low and behold he received all the inventory that he could ever want. Good work Lou!
  
  
• The web <> ecommerce store. Help your direct business by talking about how power of the web as a whole - from a branding perspective to driving customers to the brick and mortar stores. For instance Lou and his team asked a simple survey for customers on the site... "What is your main purpose of visiting" and over 50% of the answers were "to locate a store." Amazing! One simple 1-question story can provide so much insight to the entire business.
  
  
• Look at results from a customer point of view not from individual sources. As a web channel we have a tendency to look at results from email performances, PPC performance, organic results, etc. Yet it is important to look at what customers actually purchased and make adjustments accordingly. For example fish oil products sold well today vs. vitamin C - start from this angle and work backwards to find the "why."
  
  

Overall these were two great areas of conversation that helped to open my eyes and think a bit outside the box.

I have only touched on two sessions of the dozens that happened at the show...stand by for more information to follow as it comes hot off the press.

Going to the Internet Retailer show? Hey, us too. When you're there, please swing by to see us at Booth 1039. We're featuring a new offering (shhhh...don't tell anyone...it launches on Monday) that wraps our platform, partners and expertise into one value-price package that gets great sites live muy rápido. Here is a sneak peak at what's coming:

• Demandware-leading on-demand ecommerce platform: advanced merchandising, complete control, and automatic product upgrades-worth their weight in gold!
• Feature-rich, online storefront purposefully designed and optimized for the needs of fashion retailers and consumer brands-start here, go anywhere!
• Plug-and-Play Integrations with leading technologies, including analytics, payment, campaign management and others.
• Best Practices Methodology-16 week implementation program that includes strategy site design, integrations, and QA.

I could go on and on, but stop by booth 1039 and see for yourself. Oh, and not only are we experts in ecommerce, we can point you to a ton of great things to do in town, none of which are in the tourist guides. See you there!

It's always exciting to add a new member to our family of high-growth brands and we are eager to see Columbia's innovative spirit unfold on the web. Columbia is planning unique user experiences by incorporating contextual product content and rich media on its new sites - initially a US site, with others to follow for Canada and Europe (Columbia products are already sold in more than 100 countries!). Columbia also plans to integrate ecommerce kiosks into some of its bricks-and-mortar stores to expand the product selection it offers customers in the stores.

Some of the reasons Columbia selected Demandware because it provides:

• Enterprise-class ecommerce platform capabilities, without the costly Web hosting infrastructure
• Full in-house control over all aspects of the online shopping experience
• The ability to develop multiple sites quickly from a common architecture
• Seamless, automatic upgrades to continually leverage new functionality and enable best practices
• Guaranteed site performance and security
• Support for multiple languages, currencies and payment types
• Extensive expertise launching ecommerce sites internationally

For the complete story, please take a moment to read the announcement.

As a company of on-demand zealots, we here at Demandware are 100% behind the belief that on-demand is the software model of the future. I could riff for quite some time as to why-it puts accountability on the vendor for the quality and performance of the software, it helps the retailer innovate faster and realign internal resources to brand-differentiating site experiences-but sometimes it's better to let others do the talking.

In an article published this week in PC World, Mark Benioff, Saleforce.com's CEO, has thrown down the gauntlet, right on Oracle's shiny red shoes, calling for an "end to software maintenance fees." Maintenance fees, the plumpest and most tractable of Oracle's many cash cows, accounted for $2.9 billion in Oracle's third quarter alone and yields 90% margins. Moo. Benioff, no stranger to explosive quotes, references one Siebel customer saying, "This customer currently uses Siebel software to run her call center. She pays more than $15 million a year for the privilege of having to

implement the updates that Siebel sends her. That does not include backup. Or disaster recovery. And of course, it does not guarantee that she will be using the latest technology. The maintenance agreement only assures her that her outdated software will continue to work."

Benioff is also quoted as writing that the customer, "is paying tolls on a road to nowhere." Ooof.

The man, for all the rhetoric, speaks Truth. You could take most everything he's quoted as saying in this article and apply it to ecommerce. The only edit I'd suggest? Double the emphasis. Double the impact. It's one thing to talk innovation and uptime in CRM. It's another to talk innovation in ecommerce, where consumer expectations of an ecommerce site are set and reset constantly by their cumulative Internet experience. It's another thing to talk downtime in ecommerce, where millions of revenue not to mention brand reputation, can be sacked by some obscure technical gremlin lurking the depths of the platform. And for all this trouble, the retailer with a licensed software platform has the privilege of paying maintenance, for the opportunity to inherit the burdens of innovation and to meet the dirty little gremlin on some Cyber Monday. That doesn't feel like winning.

Benioff smacked the nail on the head with this one.

One of the biggest knocks against ecommerce since the beginning of time has been the idea that no matter how great your site is, you cannot replicate the in store shopping experience. While this is true for many sites, some retailers, such as Jones New York, are doing their best to surpass the brick and mortar experience by offering personal service on a large scale.

With a dedicated "Ask the Experts" section of their site, Jones New York offers every customer personal attention. Resident style expert, Lloyd Boston, is always virtually on hand to provide personal fashion advice to shoppers who can submit questions online. As a result, Jones New York provides visitors with a truly personalized shopping experience that leads to happier customers that are more likely to return.

With innovative solutions to age-old problems, companies like Jones New York are breaking free from the traditional confines of the ecommerce status quo. Before long, there's no question that brick and mortar retailers will be looking to examples just like these to improve their own in-store experience. The tables are turned...

And the beat goes on...

After a great 2008, Demandware continues to rock to a steady beat in 2009, with the launch of 16 new ecommerce sites for our clients. While we can't name them all we'd like to share with you some of our recent go-lives on the Demandware eCommerce Platform.

We are honored to be working with so many great retailers and hope you'll take a moment to visit these fabulous sites.

Anne Klein A stylish new site, the fifth for Jones Apparel Group	Frederick's of Hollywood The lingerie legend, one of the world’s best known brands	lucy Activewear A leading women’s lifestyle apparel company
s.Oliver One of the largest fashion and lifestyle companies in Europe	Mikasa Recognized worldwide as the leader in tabletop fashion	Portable AirShop The latest site from Living Direct, specializing in portable air products
YouNeek Fan Shop by HP Customizable gifts based on Dr. Seuss, Marvel Comics, Star Trek and more	SportScheck Germany’s second largest sporting goods retailer	Pfaltzgraff Designers of America’s best-loved dinnerware patterns

Stay tuned for more news from Demandware including:

• The largest retailer ever to deploy an on-demand ecommerce platform
• Programs that make it easier than every before to launch sites on Demandware
• New merchandising functionality that will revolutionize ecommerce.

(Congratulations to SportScheck on the launch of its second site on the Demandware eCommerce Platform! This latest site takes SportScheck in to Russia with its line of sporting goods, apparel and accessories. This is the second site to launch in four months on the Demandware eCommerce Platform following the launch of its Netherlands site www.sportscheck.nl in November 2008. Again, congratulations to the teams there. Check out the Russian site at www.sportscheck-online.com.

Living Direct is onto something. Previously known as Richlund Ventures, Living Direct was founded in 1999 by visionary entrepreneur Rick Lundbom who is bringing to market a diversified group of hard-to-find appliances that add a different dimension to modern small-space living. Today, it is a Top 500 e-retailer corporate brand that acts as an umbrella to different specific microsites and categories, each focusing on its product niche. Other Living Direct brands running live on the Demandware platform include compactappliance.com, livingdirect.com, hotwatersource.com and my personal favorite, kegerator.com, a bonanza for, ahem, "home & commercial keg refrigerators." Good times...

Over the past couple years, user generated content (UGC) has moved from an ecommerce nice-to-have to table stakes. Most often this is thought of as rating and reviews, such as the functionality offered by Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews, but America's Gardening Resource has taken it a step further. On Dutch Gardens, the live-products brand of America's Gardening Resources, customers can upload and share photos of their garden's beauty onto the Dutch Gardens Photo Center where they can be viewed by fellow-and passionate-gardeners. In so doing, Dutch Gardens differentiates its brand through unique, customer-generated photography. This type of user collaboration and sharing has made Dutch Gardens more than just a commerce site; it's a Web 2.0 destination site that flourishes with repeat visitors and a sense of community and brand loyalty.