LOWERING YOUR WEB ECOSYSTEM COSTS WITH CASCADE SERVER Lower long-run average costs (LRAC) Realize...

David Klanac, COO

LOWERING YOUR WEB ECOSYSTEM COSTS WITH CASCADE SERVER

• Lower long-run average costs (LRAC)• Realize increased productivity• Seize new opportunities to increase ROI

2008 Cascade Server User’s Conference

Agenda• Part I: Consolidate and Specialize• Part II: Work Smart• Part III: Reach Beyond Apache and IIS

09/22/2008 David Klanac, COO

Themes• Specialization• Comparative Advantage• Economies of Scale• Network Effect• Return on Investment


PART I: CONSOLIDATE AND SPECIALIZE• Simplify Developer Toolkit• Consolidate Project Teams • Promote “Good” Specialization


Simplify Developer Toolkit• Designed to natively solve the vast majority of

website management challenges• Core pieces of a website ranging from – consistent branding– smart, contextual navigation– automation of content reuse– approvals – All handled via ubiquitous XML technologies


Simplify Developer Toolkit• Designed with a junior web developer skill set

in mind helping to lower hiring and training costs

• Higher level programming languages (e.g. Java) not required skill sets

• XSL and Velocity (Script Formats) provide simple ways to handle business


Simplify Developer Toolkit• Protects against “bad” specialization where

unique coding architectures unnecessarily exist across the enterprise

• A patchwork of divergent implementations often requires a patchwork of unique individuals to maintain them


Simplify Developer Toolkit• For many, scripting serves as a crutch for

content reuse and automation• Simple solution via blocks, XSL and Script

Formats within one development environment


Simplify Developer Toolkit


Simplify Developer Toolkit


Consolidate Project Teams• Simplified toolkit unifies dev resources on a

common platform• Increased efficiency with code reuse and

knowledge transfer• Safely expand scope of control to merged,

core group of developers


Consolidate Project Teams


Consolidate Project Teams


Promote “Good” Specialization• Wearing multiple hats is inherently inefficient

and can be more costly in the long-term• Use CMS to play to people’s relative strengths

(a.k.a. “comparative advantage”) through role/task specialization


Promote “Good” Specialization• Specialization leads to a decrease in long run

average costs (LRAC) to produce project deliverables (a.k.a. “economies of scale”)

• Example: Time to develop automated bread crumbs menus decreases with each project – Code reuse – Increased familiarity with the problem


Promote “Good” Specialization


Promote “Good” Specialization


Promote “Good” Specialization• CMS Designers own organizational branding

via CMS templates and CSS• CMS Developers own business logic via

XSL/Script Formats• Web Developers specialize in higher-level

development for complex cases


Promote “Good” Specialization• Project Managers devote efforts to

management of centralize resource pool• Business analysts focus on requirements

gathering with simplified dev toolkit in mind


Part I SummaryTAKEAWAY(S)• Standardize on CMS development platform for

common use cases. • Leave the “long-tail”, unique use cases to your

Java or PHP developer(s)• Consolidation leads to productive collaboration

and safely expands team’s scope of control• Specialize and reduce costs to manage your web

presence through increased efficiencies


PART II: WORK SMART• Quickly Build Effective Reports• Break Down Data Silos


Quickly Build Effective Reports• Build effective reporting using CMS

technologies– Index blocks– XSL/Script Formats

• Build in percentage of time compared to separate app and save costs


Quickly Build Effective Reports• One-off reporting applications require

additional overhead just to get started!• No need to: – Create a new database– Set database permissions– Build database query routines– Devise a routing scheme– .etc..., then output report

• Who will maintain these separate applications?


Quickly Build Effective Reports• Cascade Server is an easy and cost-effective

solution• Basic Report Development:– Collect the data (inside CMS or outside via simple

SOAP calls)– Build an index block– Write an XSL or Script Format– Done.


Quickly Build Effective Reports• Example: Build an internal project tracking

application for your Services team that models key project.


Quickly Build Effective Reports






Break Down Data Silos• House your organizational knowledge in one

location using Cascade Server• Reuse content across multiple domains

without complexity and costs of gluing together disparate data stores


Break Down Data Silos• Example: Share your terms of service

agreement across all site domains and make updates to a single page

• Example: Extend the utility of your project reporting application– Project documents– Automate client extranet pages


Break Down Data Silos


Break Down Data Silos


Part II SummaryTAKEAWAY(S)• Single-sourced content repository saves

money on integration costs of disparate data stores

• CMS-based reports offer actionable information in a fraction of the time and cost to produce a specialized application


PART III: REACH BEYOND APACHE AND IIS• W3C Vision• Power Your Portal• Reduce Time-to-Market for Print


W3C Vision• Founded in 1994, the W3C purpose is to “to

lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and to ensure long-term growth for the Web.”

• XML is a W3C recommendation “originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing” and to play “an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere”


Reduce Time-to-Market for Print• Print publications – Product pamphlets – Course catalogs

• Require the contributions and oversight of multiple individuals or teams

• Address this need by publishing content out to a print production application such as Adobe InDesign CS3 using XML


Reduce Time-to-Market for Print


Reduce Time-to-Market for Print• Update CMS content• Publish to in InDesign• Focus on substance in CMS then style it with

InDesign


Reduce Time-to-Market for Print• Caution: InDesign will not save layout

modifications if you re-import content• Workaround: Focus on iterative InDesign

imports where the content is predictable• Workaround: Break your print publication into

separate InDesign “working copy” merge the files into a final document for minor proofing.


Reduce Time-to-Market for Print• Augment the print and reduce time by 40-60%• Lower production costs to produce the same

print publication• Costs to power more of your web ecosystem

continue to be disproportionately smaller than the productivity output gained


Power Your Portal• A portal solution such as a Sun Java Portal is

powerful method for offering tailored content to website visitors

• Challenge: could be yet another separate data store and application to actively maintain


Power Your Portal• Use Cascade Server to build your individual

portlets as XHTML• Portal developers need only write a generic

routine for performing an “HTML Scrape” • Published XHTML pages are referenced

directly inside of portlets (similar to an iframe)


Power Your Portal


Power Your Portal• Benefits:– No new training. Build portlets using CMS

technologies– End user contributors publish XHTML content as

usual– Dev investment considerably smaller using CMS to

power portal


Power Your Portal• Example: Organization offers a medical portal

to 30,000+ clinicians, nurses, and other medical support staff.

• Content must be updated on the hour with updated news feed items that are translated into 17 different languages.


Power Your Portal• Utilize Cascade Server to– Consume the news feeds as pages via web services– Instantiate 17 translation workflows per news item– Automatically adhere to branding guidelines via

XSL/Script Formats– Automatically enforce the usage of common,

translated page elements– Publish content to two load-balanced web servers


Power Your Portal• End Result: – Serve a user community of 30,000 portal users– Rely on simple Cascade Server technologies to

save time and money


Part III SummaryTAKEAWAY(S)• Cascade Server uses XML technology to drive

costs down in non-traditional places beyond the typical web server

• “Network effect” begins to occur as more pieces of your web ecosystem are added leading to increased ROI


PART IV: CONCLUSION• Merge teams and play to each others’ strengths• Consolidate knowledge and don’t reinvent the wheel• Expand your horizons beyond the web server


Conclusion


Conclusion


Conclusion


Conclusion• Cascade Server + Web Ecosystem equals:– Lower long-run average costs (LRAC)– Realize increased productivity– Seize new opportunities to increase ROI


David Klanac, COO

LOWERING YOUR WEB ECOSYSTEM COSTS WITH CASCADE SERVER

Questions:[email protected]

2008 Cascade Server User’s Conference

Date post:	21-Dec-2015
Category:	Documents
View:	213 times
Download:	0 times

LOWERING YOUR WEB ECOSYSTEM COSTS WITH CASCADE SERVER Lower long-run average costs (LRAC) Realize...

Documents