Dell's e-system: XML

The Dell websites are extremely large and complex. In order to reduce this complexity, duplication and maintenance effort Dell employed the use of XML. The following summary [1] is a brief report on a presentation given by John Winfrey of Dell Computer who spoke of "Data Transport and Management Using XML", which focused on the US Dell Web sites:

"Dell.com is a huge site to maintain, having 20,000 pages in its Services section alone. However, the site is key to Dell's success since it nets Dell $35 million per day in online sales, which now represents 43% of all sales (their goal is 50%). The problem that XML was selected to solve is one of duplication of content across major sections of the Web site, such as Home and Office. Much of the product information is very similar for certain configurations but may have slightly different options. Prices change on the average of three times a week at Dell, so it was tedious to make the necessary page changes using an HTML-only approach. Moreover, Dell's redesign needed to take into account what they call customer-ization, the ultimate in customization because it includes the exact product owned by the customer as well as locale factors (such as language). Winfrey spoke of ePub, the term Dell uses for the set of tools, Web server, plus application for the management and delivery of content. "

References
[1] Dell.com: XML Case Study and Web Catalogue, http://wdvl.internet.com/Authoring/Languages/XML/Conferences/XML99/dell.html