Fast Facts:

• Industry: Post
• Goal: Improve competitive power of China Post in e-commerce field.
• Software: Red Flag Linux DC 5.0 SP2 X86-64, Red Flag HA cluster 5.0, Oracle 10g, Tuxedo 8.1 and Weblogic 8.1
• Benefits: low-cost, available and reliable

Background of the project:

As a new business model, e-commerce has become the focus of modern enterprise. China Post, which has the necessary advantages of e-commerce: "logistics flow, information flow and cash flow", is fully making progress towards e-commerce field now. Through the 11185 system, 183 website and network access, each postal branch has successively started businesses like selling aviation e-ticket, collecting telephone rate and public welfare fund etc.  

The current operational environment of postal e-commerce is worse because of some historical reasons, so a unified e-commerce platform, which needs to be established immediately, will help China Post integrate resources, improve quality of service and develop new businesses.  

Customer requirements:

As an important part of postal e-commerce, the platform to be constructed should integrate all kinds of resources, start new businesses, complete settlement work, support operation management, as well as regulate the access of different channels including 183 website, 11185 Call Center, network and message.  

Solutions and deployment:

The e-commerce platform has two levels architecture: national center and provincial center. In national center, only the national business order is treated, while the application system of national business is deployed.  

In provincial center, database server, application server, WEB server, report server, communication server, terminal server, backup server and storage device are installed. Database server stores local business data; all business transactions and inquiry services are realized by application server; WEB server is used for local business management; report server is used for the statistics, analysis and reporting of local business data; communication server is responsible for the data transfer with national application server or the third party system in same province; terminal server provides the access service of independent business handling terminal; backup server is used for the backup of local business data.  

Operation terminal, used by postal business departments, could realize the real-time communication between national application server and provincial application server. E-commerce platform could process business through the existing terminal equipments.  

Electronic branches and the 11185 system could reconstruct the system using standard interface provided by the e-commerce platform, or directly process business using client software supplied by the e-commerce platform either. 

In order to guarantee the reliability of application system, Red Flag Linux is adopted to monitor the application systems like message gateway, payment gateway etc, meanwhile, it can be switched in time regardless of hardware or software failure, improving the system's availability greatly.