NewsForge: MySQL Addresses istockphoto’s Enterprise Needs

“When istockphoto.com launched in February 2000, the images in
its database were available free of charge, and the entire company
ran on one server with an Access database. ‘At that time, traffic
was very low,’ says istockphoto.com Executive Vice President
Patrick Lor. In 2002, the company moved to a fee structure and
wanted to increase traffic. ‘We came across this amazing thing that
looked like enterprise-grade software, called MySQL.’ With that and
PHP, they re-coded the entire site, and in 2002 sold 154,000 images
at 25 cents each. ‘We went to two generic servers and had an
amazing year,’ he says. ‘That was our first real exposure to fee
structures and the reception was incredible…'”

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