Patent ID: 8195521

Claim:
An electronic commerce system, which comprises: a plurality of customer facing utility systems, each of said customer facing utility systems coupled to a customer facing communication network, wherein the plurality of customer facing utility systems are each configured to communicate with customer systems coupled to the customer facing communication network, and each of said customer facing utility systems having associated therewith authoritative data that is writable to by said customer facing utility system and read-only data; means for replicating data written to said authoritative data of any one of said customer facing utility systems to the authoritative data of each of the other customer facing utility systems; a plurality of street side systems, each of said street side systems being adapted to communicate with street systems, each of said street side systems having associated therewith authoritative data that is writable to by said street side system and read-only data; and means for replicating data written to said authoritative data of any one of said street side systems to the authoritative data of each of the other street side systems.