From E-Commerce Times today:

Major e-commerce sites such as Costco.com, WalMart.com and Amazon.com all saw slowdowns in Web site operation or outright crashes.

The Overstock.com  Web site was briefly out when it was slammed with visitors seeking its special offer on the “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” movie. The Wal-Mart site was reportedly down for as long as two hours after advertising online-only specials on Black Friday.

While the frustration may seem fleeting, the damage can be lasting.

“Online shoppers have exceedingly high expectations this holiday season, and they are an unforgiving crowd,” said William Agush, vice president of marketing at Web site performance monitoring firm Gomez. “It appears that ensuring a quality online experience trumps brand loyalty, and even savings.”

It’s likely that e-commerce companies will be in line to do some shopping of their own in early 2007, buying servers to beef up their Web-based infrastructure. In other words, to grow, and grow up, just a bit more.

One of our newer high-profile customers saw their volume double from holiday 2004 to holiday 2005 when they ran our software for the first time. When I asked the head of their eCommerce business what the best thing about his new site was, he said “It didn’t break.”

In many cases, online volume is increasing tremendously. Comscore is reporting a 25% increase this year over last across the industry. Even some great sites that have weathered the growth well in the past are reaching the limits of their aging technology. We are seeing an increasing number of these merchants realizing that if the site won’t stay up, nothing else matters – and that is driving two things: a strong resurgence in re-platforming, and the realization that build-it-yourself is no longer a viable strategy.  Modern sites demand the technology and experience baked into widely-deployed commercial platforms.