Case Study: Web Meister

The Client:

The client is a Japanese multi-media production company which was founded in 1996. The Tokyo-based company employs more than 600 people.

Requirements:

The Internet has already become a vital means of communication. Especially, Website (site at the following) is now recognized as a medium, and is beginning to have as much appeal power as other media. In the meantime, the complexity of the management of contents for small and medium sites increases, and it becomes a big problem for Webmasters.
Our client wanted to develop Web Meister (WM) to satisfy this need. WM is a software system that supports managing/operating content for small and medium sites. It would not only help the site administrator to manage the existing content but also create new content following the standard of W3C for the site.

Duration: 15 months

Challenges:

The task of taking a huge database and reshaping it to improve efficiency was a difficult undertaking. FPT Software found that:
   - The starting point is a vague set of requirements.
   - The system was complex and distributed.
   - Extremely communication-intensive type of project.
   - Extremely tight-schedule, resulting in a large team.
   - Difficult to tap into a Japanese resource, who could act as a translator to help the team in interpreting the requirements as well as the test result. This is a big problem when working with a partner from Japan.

Solutions:

We used our Onsite-Offshore Model. A team was sent to work onsite to study the requirements, then an offshore team of 32 members handled the assignment and completed the project well within the stipulated time requirement of 103 person months. The team used the Integrated System Methodology (ISM) to implement the solution. This covers all aspects of a project including strategy, choice of technology, desired user experience, and delivery management.
Our team provided an end-to-end Content Management System using Oracle 10g, Oracle Web DAV, Oracle XML Repository, Oracle XML Pipeline Processor and Java to develop all applications on Apache Tomcat Server. The system also had to support multi-languages with the default one being Japanese.

Architecture: Link to image

Technologies Used: Eclipse 4.0.3, CVS 1.3, Tomcat 4.1, Oracle 10g, XMLSpy 5.0, Fsoft tools.

Benefits to Customer:

Though FPT Software faced several problems because of language issues, it still managed to deliver considerable benefits, including:
   - The client was able to work with a single technology partner on myriad development and support tasks, thus keeping costs low, and efficiency and quality high.
   - The FPT Software team created and delivered a series of new products at a reasonable cost. Thanks to the offshore-based sustenance model that the team put in place, the client's Total Cost of Operations (TCO) was dramatically reduced.