Case Study

IntelliSys Technology Corporation (ITC)

Business Problem

IntelliSys Technology Corporation (ITC) was founded in 1983 as a provider of computer maintenance services to the federal government. In 1998, ITC undertook new management and expanded into a complete technology solution provider. This included the traditional networking solutions, plus the sale of computer and peripheral equipment. Due to this new strategy, ITC grew from $25 million in 1997 to $120 million in 1998. In 1999, ITC management came to the conclusion that its philosophy of helping government employees to work better and faster could be applied to the Internet. The decision was then made to transform the company into an e-business. Management decided to take a unique approach to the government market, combining pure content, community, and e-commerce into a single site focused on customer service and ease-of-use. The envisioned portal site was intended to expand the company's revenue base by providing a new channel for the company's current products and services, and by generating new revenue streams such as advertising, subscriptions, transaction fees and project management fees. The site is also intended to reduce ITC's cost of providing customer service and generating new contracts. The problem faced by its CEO, Steven Baldwin, and his management team, was how to design and build a world-class, comprehensive portal website with the performance, security and scalability to serve tens of thousands of simultaneous users in time to beat potential competitors to market?

Solution

ITC retained NuWave to develop this new portal website, called PlanetGov.com. ITC selected NuWave based on its ability to rapidly develop the comprehensive portal solution, with factors including content management, quick time to market, third-party data connectivity and enterprise-level scalability. To meet ITC's aggressive time-to-market goals, NuWave designed and built an open, Java-based platform that eliminated the need to create mechanical aspects of the site, such as state and session management and security from scratch. NuWave built the new government portal in five months, and the site successfully handled 5 million hits in its first few weeks of operation. The portal website's comprehensive offerings included integrated chat and message board functionality, real-time traffic and weather reporting, user-customized streaming news and investment feeds, online customer service, as well as integrated partner offerings, such as e-learning courseware and personalized e-mails, all with a consistent look-and-feel.

Development Cycle

Following NuWave's proven methodology, NuWave first helped ITC assess overall objectives and requirements. One of those most important requirements was for an Internet-based administration tool for ITC staff to maintain and update the website on a regular basis, with built-in workflow and process approvals. NuWave created a modular, open enterprise architecture that made it easy for editorial, as opposed to technical, staff to update dynamic content on a regular basis. The administration tool empowered content managers with the ability to review and edit data feeds provided by numerous content providers and advertisers, as well as internally developed content, and then, with a single click, post the article to the PlanetGov site. NuWave developed this tool in Java, with the business logic embedded in application server level business objects and called from the forms. The tool operates smoothly and efficiently on any Java-2 capable client, allowing editors to work from home or from anywhere they have access to the Internet, regardless of the PC type (ITC's staff used both IBM-compatible PCs, as well as Apple Macintosh PCs). Another important requirement noted by ITC was that the new portal website run across all browsers used by the government (AOL, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer). NuWave's familiarity and experience with the subtle differences in each of these browsers and respective versions allowed for the creation of consistent functionality and look-and-feel regardless of the browser, with seamless integration of the administration tool to account automatically for different browser types without any development knowledge by the end-user. Given ITC's projected growth for the new portal website, ITC also required that the website support 1000 concurrent users with redundancy and fail-over using only two two-processor 4GB Sun Solaris E450 servers (Unix). NuWave utilized the state-of-the-art load-balancing/fail-over techniques and easily met ITC's demands, testing the simulated load requirements with multiple servers even when development was only 50% complete. Indeed, after going live, PlanetGov received one million hits per day on a consistent basis and never failed to handle the load.

Application Results

NuWave Solutions completed the six-channel portal complete with hourly updated content and interactive user options in only five months with five developers. In the site's first six weeks of existence, PlanetGov received over five million hits, 5500 registered users and fifty advertisers. PlanetGov's traffic only increased from there, with over one million hits daily. In designing and building PlanetGov, NuWave met or exceeded all ITC's requirements and delivered PlanetGov on a timely basis and within budget.

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