MercuryNews.com:
Intuit encounters challenges in shifting to Web-based services
By Rocelle Garner
Bloomberg News
When a power failure knocked out Intuit's servers last month, the outage did more than strand 300,000 customers. It showed the challenges in shifting from selling shrink-wrapped software to Internet-based services.
Under Chief Executive Officer Brad Smith, Intuit is aiming to get more than 75 percent of sales from Web-based services and software by 2015. To do that, he plans to continue a run of Internet acquisitions. Smith's also developing new features and investing in operations to prove that Intuit, best known for its TurboTax and Quicken, can run a reliable online service.
"We don't have the luxury of going down," Smith, 46, said from Intuit's headquarters in Mountain View. "We are required to be available 24/7, and we're doing everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Smith, working with Intuit's chief technology officer and chief information officer, is analyzing what went wrong in June and working out procedures to avoid future outages. The company also is making its data centers more efficient, in part by shutting down smaller offices and concentrating more of its operations in a state-of-the-art, 240,000-square-foot facility that it built in Quincy, Wash.
Intuit now gets 60 percent of its revenue from online products, up from less than half before Smith took over in 2008. That's come at a price: During the past three years, the company has spent about $300 million on equipment and networking costs, primarily for the new data center. [Read more]
posted by: gqjournal
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