
When
Business Needs Change,
Information Architecture Can Facilitate
or Cost a Bundle
By
Dan Larson, Chief Development Officer, Epic
Partners
Enhydra in Action
Epic Partners has demonstrated the benefits of using Enhydra
with these clients:
www.stlouisbestjobs.com
Epic built and launched this regional employment site using
Enhydra within six weeks. After the first 30 days, more than
100 companies were using the internet recruiting solution and
the site was receiving more than 3,000 unique visitors per day.
www.strategichr.com
Epic is developing a new channel to market for this brick-and-mortar
outsource provider of human resources services by designing
a robust e-commerce site. The ability to make rapid, cost-effective
changes without major impact to the organization by using Enhydra
is important to this client.
www.campusdog.com
Epic created a site with the ability to deliver and update local
content to students on more than 1,300 college campuses across
the nation. Using Enhydra, Epic developed flexible site architecture
that allows for rapid and cost-efficient customization from
a single platform.
Enhydra's Benefits
In today's fast-paced business environment, companies depend
on their e-systems and sites to remain competitive and gain
market share. As a professional services provider designing
and implementing end-to-end solutions, Epic's technical team
likes Enhydra because:
-
It is written in Java, making it platform independent
- It uses industry standards such as XML
- Troubleshooting is facilitated by having the source
code
- Lutris provides valuable support and services, including
serving as a gatekeeper to maintain current versions
- It is cost-effective for clients
- The benefits of its use help distinguish Epic from
other information technology service providers
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Our clients don’t
need to be visionaries to succeed in their ever-changing marketplaces.
They need technology
that allows them to be flexible enough to meet market demands.
They need to be able
to change their business models and still gain incremental revenues
by leveraging their existing IT infrastructures.
They need to determine
now how to build cost-effective technical solutions to accomplish
their business objectives that won’t limit their capabilities in
the near future.
A tall order?
Only when the focus
is on information technology rather than information architecture.
It’s like finding
the perfect drill that has the best bits to make the holes you need
for one project without knowing whether or not other bits are available
or how to change them if you decide to make something else.
Our clients have
the right tool belts to pound out their next moves because we use
open-source application server Enhydra to build their web applications
with multi-tiered open information architecture.
What we’re doing
is eliminating the shackles of applications that require specific
hardware and platforms. Placing our codes inside the Enhydra framework,
which uses industry-standards such as XML, allows our programs to
run on any platform. And, they can be accessed from anywhere, wired
or wireless, now or in the future.
Enhydra also lays
the groundwork for multi-tiered architecture by separating the three
programmable layers of a web site. Our clients benefit because we
can develop sites faster when technicians building the presentation
portion (in HTML/WML) and business logic/database functions (in
JAVA/XML) can work simultaneously. Down the road, there is great
advantage in having the flexibility to make changes with minimal
impact to the organization – taking advantage of industry changes
and technical innovation more rapidly than the competition.
The open nature of
our information architecture allows us to incorporate or add components
to meet needs now and increase functionality later. One example
is our advanced portlett solution that delivers location-specific
content to any portal site. Because it is platform independent,
it can be cost-effectively integrated into existing systems and
transfer information to any device. So, a company could provide
localized information to customers across the country or allow outside
sales reps to access regional statistics via their cellular phones
or palm pilots without undergoing significant site modification
and the associated investment of time and dollars.
There are also advantages
of working with an open-source application server of Enhydra’s caliber
with the support and service of Lutris Technologies. Having the
source code available allows our technicians to troubleshoot more
quickly, determine whether a problem is due to the server or their
own code, and fully assess how the two are working together. This
facilitates our ability to build or change the information architecture
that will help our clients rapidly gain or maintain competitive
advantage in their marketplaces.
And then, there’s
the cost factor. Not only do we save our clients hundreds of thousands
of dollars by using Enhydra instead of purchasing commercial application
servers, it doesn’t cost any more to design and develop a robust,
flexible information architecture than establish a typical framework
that can not readily accommodate future business needs.
Like everyone, our
clients don’t necessarily know what’s to come. But, they have the
vision to use flexible, scaleable information architecture so they
can be ready to meet new demands without excessive time and cost.
Editor’s Note:
Epic Partners is a national information technology services
provider that delivers total business solutions in custom wired
and wireless application development, systems integration, e-commerce,
multi-service network integration, strategic services, managed services
and strong project management. With offices in Orange County, Calif.
and St. Louis, the company’s management team is comprised of seasoned
business and technical experts with successful backgrounds in healthcare
and retail banking. Dan Larson can be reached at 636/530-1028 or
dlarson@epicpartners.com.
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