Unlike standard hosting solutions, Akamai distributes content globally to enhance performance by increasing a user's proximity to the web server. The JSPs and servlets can easily piece together pages from templates and pull information from the database. However, generating dynamic images is a slightly different matter. Macromedia's Generator product serves custom-made images on the fly. Many concierges work from home, not from a central location.
Concierges also answer emails from customers and are available for online chats.
Synchrony Communications' eCRM product manages all of these customer interactions. The back end was designed to be platform independent, able to work with a variety of PBXs and different environments. A thin-client front end, also written in Java, allows the concierges and customers to use any browser that supports Java. Synchrony's eCRM architecture is shown in Figure 2. Concierges run the application remotely over a high-speed connection.