1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Alibris is in scarcity of money long line of vendors to be paid Current listing service is already generating revenue of 20% of dealers offer price very little money in bank account. Cash burn rate for implementing IT infrastructure is quite high.

So, it is wise for Alibris to go for simply forward books of dealers at such a situation.

IT crisis in the company Draining money supply from the company Spent large amount of money behind Internet Commerce Server software Hiring consultants and IT specialists Little money in the bank.

Change in the revenue model, Poor technology decisions Due to the shortage of money, extend all of the vendors. T1 line was about to be cut off. Would need to search for bridge money to support IT manager for solving the problem.

Establishing T1 communication link Slow search engine Problems in Applying Record Locking system Each book has separate records No contemporary ecommerce software for handling large database The management and IT team of Alibris was not efficient Transitioning the Interloc Database from a simple listing of text fields to salable stock-keeping units (SKUs)

Move database from Massachusetts to California

Lack of Skills of value-added retailer (VAR) in installing Oracles ecommerce software

Having bug in the e-commerce software itself No contemporary ecommerce software for handling this large database

Too complicated integration process . Crucial structural and designing decisions Imperfection in the Internet Commerce Server software. Information Technology was not standardized

No, it is not rare but it is also not frequent.

It is not rare because
The most obvious example is Oracles Products problem with Alibris.

In the time of releasing a new product the technology may not be too much developed
The product may not work in all intended contexts

But the problem is not frequent because Problem may occur in Individual users Hardware. Large vendors release beta version: which is an experimental version of the software before launching a new product. Large vendors invest a large amount of time, effort and money in developing a product. They are concerned with their reputation.