Moving an eCommerce Site

Hello,

I apologize, I had an account here in the past and I cannot find my login information, so I have had to create a new account and am coming here with a fairly intense problem that I need help resolving. I have used these forums for a long time to resolve other issues I have had and hope to get some good advice here while I continue looking for a solution outside.

1. I work for a large scientific manufacturing corporation as a web marketing specialist

2. The business unit that I work for directly has been sold to another corporation

3. The current business unit runs two different sites - an eCommerce site and a lead-generating site (where the products are of such a high-value that it is impossible to actually sell them through an eCommerce site)

4. Both current sites (eCommerce site and the lead-generating site) are kept entirely separate - different domains, different servers, etc.

5. Our new corporate owners want to remove that separation - placing the eCommerce site under their main site (i.e., www.examplecoporate.com/eCommerce)

6. This seems contrary to most other leaders on the web - Apple uses a cname for their store, as does Adobe, etc. - and many others use an entirely separate domain name, host and so forth

7. The new corporate maintains a site that is PHP-driven (Typo3)

8. Our current eCommerce store is a purchased ASP application (ASPDotNetStoreFront)

What are the downfalls (if any) that you would want to be clear on proceeding with an action like this?

I feel the need for speed (lol) would be negatively transferred since an eCommerce site requires hosting that is secure and therefore is already slower than an unsecured host (for the size of content that exists for all aspects of the corporation, this is definitely a factor even at the smallest fraction level).

I also feel that marketing for eCommerce traffic is far different than lead-generation and that the eCommerce would either be hurt by or would hurt the main site.

Whatever feedback I can get on this would be extremely helpful.

Mahalo and have a better one!
John