We've helped some of the worlds most prominent enterprises. How can we help you?
Company Overview
Advent International is one of the largest private equity organizations in the world. With over 20 years of experience and offices in 15 countries, Advent has become a leader in international private equity investing.
Challenges
Advent required a full web presence in 1999. At the time, Advent's technology footprint did not allow them to install databases in a production environment. Since then, Advent needed a trusted technology partner to help manage its web operations, implement content management solutions, and improve its on-site search functionality.
LTech Solution
LTech worked with Advent's creative team to design information architecture, site templates, and a content management system that met their needs. In 2007, LTech rebuilt the entire site using a SQL database to provide for more advanced content management.
Results
LTech's migration of the website to SQL Server increased the speed of the site, and provided Advent with an expandable framework for their public communications platform. LTech's continued management of Advent's web presence has allowed them to communicate effectively via the web to prospective investors and customers.
Company Overview
New York Life
is the largest life insurance company in America and one of the largest in the world. They provide a variety of securities products and mutual funds.
Challenges
New York Life's existing intranet search was fragmented and unable to return relevant results. They decided to go with a GSA solution from Google to greatly improve their user experience. Their content was spread out across a diverse array of systems, including Vignette V6 and V7, IBM WebSphere Portal, and Oracle databases, all run by different development groups. In addition, they had unique security requirements which required viability testing for delivering secure content. They needed help in configuring the GSA to answer all of their problems, by crawling all their content, delivering secure search, and providing search to their enterprise applications. In order to ensure the success of the project, a short term proof-of-concept was executed, and LTech was chosen to participate.
LTech Solution
LTech worked closely with New York Life's development team and provided guidance and solutions on a wide array of GSA topics. LTech was able to:
- Develop and present options for implementing secure search on top of NYL's unique infrastructure.
- Create XSL stylesheets to mimic the look and feel of their existing web properties.
- Modify in-house applications to make backend calls to the GSA, taking advantage of advance search (metadata) functionality.
- Index and search content and metadata from New York Life's variety of intranet applications.
- Create metadata-and-url crawls to gather metadata from external databases and incorporate it into the GSA's index.
- Author a "Findings and Recommendations" document detailing the results of the proof-of-concept, and providing recommendations for the full blown implementation.
Results
The proof-of-concept resulted in a functioning secure search implementation for New York Life. A plan for full scale deployment was delivered, allowing New York Life to staff and execute the project.
Company Overview
First released in 1982,
PC Magazine
is a biweekly magazine published for technology professionals with previews and reviews of new hardware and software. The magazine, which spawned an online edition in 1994, contains articles written by experts in the field of information technology.
Challenges
PC Magazine wanted to improve the search feature on their website. With thousands of products and reviews available to search on the site, they needed a way to provide more organized and relevant search results.
LTech Solution
LTech set up PC Magazine with a custom Google Search Appliance implementation, which allowed users to search products grouped by category, price, brand, and more.
Results
LTech was able to customize the GSA in order to reflect the company's needs and the requirements of the site. The Google Search Appliance helped PC Magazine give their users faster and more relevant search results, as well as various filtering options.
Company Overview
Match.com
is an online dating service with over 15 million members in 37 countries. The site began in 1994 as a prototype for electronic classifieds. After its launch, the site has since grown to employ more than 340 people with offices all over the world.
Challenges
Match.com wanted a page that would display the personal stories of couples who met using their site. They required a comprehensive page that would allow users to submit photographs and biographies, as well as use keywords and location to search through others' stories and email them to friends.
LTech Solution
LTech designed and built the Match.com Success Site with interactive features for Match.com members to use and visitors to browse. LTech implemented a search feature which displays results by category, location, and keyword.
Results
Match.com provided a link to their new success stories site on their homepage and it has become a popular place for couples to share their Match.com experience with others. The site is still up and running smoothly.
Company Overview
Fidelity Investments
is a group of privately held financial services companies founded in 1946. They serve more than 21 million investors and operate centers in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Challenges
Fidelity (Devonshire Investors) needed assistance with integrating the GSA into their intranet search application, as well as integrating Single Sign On through Windows authentication.
LTech Solution
LTech implemented the GSA Windows Access Connector to provide Single Sign On.
Results
The integration went smoothly and Fidelity was satisfied with LTech's work. Tight integration with active security allowed users to securely retrieve search results without logging into multiple systems.
Company Overview
Paypal is an e-commerce business and subsidiary of eBay which allows consumers to make secure payments over the internet without using traditional paper methods. PayPal processes transactions for online vendors and other sites.
Challenges
The PayPal website offers a link with a "comment card" for users to rate and comment on their PayPal experience. At the time, all data was sent to OpinionLab with no simple way for PayPal employees to access it. PayPal required an easier means of searching the responses they received from users.
LTech Solution
LTech configured and implemented a Google Mini, working with PayPal and OpinionLab to create a search interface for PayPal employees. With the Google Mini, other servers and code were eliminated, making it much easier for PayPal to access user suggestions and ratings.
Results
The new search interface enabled Paypal employees to browse users' comments themselves. This provided a much more efficient way for Paypal to evaluate suggestions in order to determine possible improvements for the site.
Company Overview
Mayo Clinic
is a world-renowned medical practice located in Rochester, Minnesota. With a consistent ranking by many sources as one of the top hospitals in America, their model for clinical practice is internationally acclaimed.
Challenges
The Mayo Clinic needed help with general GSA setup and best practices. They also had some unique requirements around processing and displaying custom OneBox results given variable business rules.
LTech Solution
LTech rewrote the stock XSL stylesheet that ships with the GSA to support advanced OneBox processing.
Results
The setup went smoothly and the project went live on time. LTech successfully completed a prototype on mayoclinic.com, enabling the client to quickly and efficiently roll out their GSA search to other web properties.
Company Overview
Market America is a product brokerage and Internet marketing company with over 500 employees and 3 million customers. With more than 1,000 partner stores, search engines, and more, Market America has pioneered an online shopping experience where their customers can find anything they need all in one place. Market America has generated over $2.4 billion in accumulated retail sales with its revolutionary One-to-One Marketing concept.
Challenges
Market America wanted to build a new system for searching ecommerce products in order to bring better search results and features to their customers. With 2,000 partner stores and over 50 million products for sale, Market America needed a way to provide more convenient search. After analyzing the necessary specifications, they determined that Google was the only search engine capable of handing the robust search experience they wanted to offer.
LTech Solution
LTech developed a full featured merchandising system to give Market America full control over search results to feature partner products, cross-sell MA products, and aggregate affiliate products from Linkshare, Commission Junction, and Performics for a very powerful comparison shopping experience. Following the proposed Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), LTech engineered a scalable search service that abstracted the intricacies of the search appliance enabling search across the enterprise. This service was configured to call an array of Google Search Appliances to service over 3 million products.
Results
The Google Search Appliance and enterprise enhancements have allowed Market America to provide their customers with an easy and intuitive search experience. With faceted navigation and comparison pricing, customers can sort products by price, store, and brand. More intelligent product grouping allows customers to navigate results more easily, saving them time and energy. Market America's advanced user-friendly search matches people with the products they are looking for, increasing sales and revenue.
Company Overview
The Huffington Post is a popular online newsite and weblog featuring daily columns, news commentary, and public opinions. The site was launched in 2005 and has over 45 million readers today.
Challenges
After a detailed analysis of the available options for a corporate email solution, Huffington Post decided to move their entire corporate user base from Noteworthy to Google Apps Premium Edition, a more suitable service for their needs.
During their attempt to perform an in-house migration to Google Apps, they experienced several obstacles that impeded the process. They reached out to LTech's for its expertise in Google Apps set up, configuration, and migration.
LTech Solution
With the specialized knowledge and expertise in Google Apps solutions, LTech completed the Google Premium Apps set up (50 users), personalization, and migration from Noteworthy solution.
Results
LTech completed the migration in less than four days, providing The Huffington Post with a robust and cost effective email solution. The client was extremely pleased with LTech's work, as well as Google Apps Premium Edition.
“You guys did a super job for us. LTech's people are creative, bright, knowledgeable and extremely helpful. They are a delight to work with. I would recommend you to anyone looking for a Google Technology partner.” Paul Berry, Chief Technology Officer, Huffington Post.
Company Overview
Concordia University was founded in 1893 in St. Paul, Minnesota as a university of the Lutheran church. It is one of ten colleges in the Concordia University system.
Challenges
Concordia University wished to reduce their overall costs associated with hosting student and faculty mailboxes on Microsoft Exchange. Concordia's intentions were to retain all faculty mailboxes on their Exchange server while hosting student mailboxes from Google Apps.
Concordia came to LTech for help in determining how the student mailboxes could be separately hosted on a different mail system while sharing the same address space. They also needed assistance in ensuring that email could safely be exchanged between both students and faculty without causing infinite sending loops, which could take their local Exchange server offline.
LTech Solution
After careful review and design, a solution was delivered to Concordia which allowed for a smooth and very quick implementation meeting their requirements. LTech performed the necessary configuration change for Concordia, providing all students and faculty with a fully functional email system.
Results
With all staff and students using Google Apps, the cost of maintaining mailboxes dropped significantly. After implementing their solution, their total costs for managing a university-wide email system were reduced to nearly 10% of what their previous years investment had been.
Company Overview
Educarchile
is an educational website with 50,000 users, mostly students, founded by the Chilean Ministry of Education and Fundacion Chile. It provides the Chilean community with the necessary resources to improve education in poor schools.
Challenges
Educarchile wanted to move their existing email system over to Google Apps and implement Single Sign On (SSO), so that users could automatically log into Google Apps when they they logged into their web portal. In addition, they wanted users synchronized between the portal and Google Apps to eliminate managing users in two places. In an interesting twist, all communication with Educarchile needed to be conducted in Spanish.
LTech Solution
This was one of Google's first customers on a Microsoft platform to integrate with Google Apps, and at the time there was no code available (in .NET) that worked with Google Apps or the SSO service. As a result, LTech built APIs from the ground up to integrate with the Google Apps provisioning and SSO systems.
Results
The APIs were successful and Educarchile went live as planned. Google ultimately contacted LTech regarding the .NET SSO APIs developed for this project and incorporated them on code.google.com. (
http://code.google.com/p/google-apps-sso-sample/
)
Company Overview
GetTheJob.com
is a vertical job search engine that gives job seekers access to thousands of listings from companies' corporate career centers. GetTheJob prides itself in offering high quality employment opportunities and facilitating a better search experience.
Challenges
GetTheJob needed to build a web spidering infrastructure, a search engine, and a Web 2.0 interface with community elements - and host all of it, in less than a few months time.
LTech Solution
LTech's software architects and strategists worked closely with GetTheJob's senior management to identify vendors, plan custom development, and help build out a team of individuals to manage and operate the new infrastructure. LTech implemented a world-class web spidering and structure data management infrastructure, integrated the Google Search Appliance to take care of search needs, and implemented a user-friendly AJAX interface to engage users. LTech designed and built out a 24x7 hardened hosting environment based on a managed service approach to run all of the technology.
Results
GetTheJob is now the premier direct-hire job search engine, with over 600,000 unique visitors per month and millions of page views. Millions of people have enjoyed GetTheJob's service to find jobs where they live, direct from employers.
Company Overview
Nodus Solutions is a consultancy focused on helping clients solve unique business challenges using a wide range of products and services. Nodus takes pride in their extensive experience and maintaining a strong relationship with clients.
Challenges
Nodus Solutions needed custom setup work for a Google Mini, which would not work with a handful of their IP addresses.
LTech Solution
During the initial install phases of the Nodus Google Mini appliance, LTech offered services over the phone with Nodus IT staff onsite. Soon LTech had successfully completed an integration of a Mini appliance into Nodus's enterprise network.
Results
Within an hour of configuration and testing, Nodus's Mini had started crawling various data stores for content. The integration into their custom written applications served data to thousands of users each hour. Nodus Solutions was extremely pleased with the quick response time and services delivered by LTech.
Company Overview
AllianceBernstein
is one of the largest investment managers in the United States, offering over 100 mutual funds. The company manages nearly $8 billion in client assets under management. In 2006, the company became AllianceBernstein L.P.
Challenges
Alliance was building out a new content management and portal system for http://www.alliancebernstein.com, part of an effort to reposition the new brand after the Alliance Capital / Sanford Bernstein merger. They needed to integrate ASP.NET templating and widget techniques for their mutual fund wholesalers and customers. Along with their new website, Alliance needed to ensure their wholesale team was able to communicate with customers in a timely fashion when on the road.
LTech Solution
LTech developed portal controls, contributed to the portal framework, and built interfaces to mutual fund, news, and market data systems. Using C# and ASP.NET on both SQL Server and Sybase databases, LTech implemented custom calculators and document delivery tracking systems to improve portal user experience. LTech also implemented an enterprise service between Seibel CRM and Microsoft Exchange, to allow their wholesaler team to stay in touch with customers on the road using their Blackberry devices.
Results
AllianceBernstein successfully launched their portal in January 2005, providing a capstone to their merger for their public facing web properties. The successful launch of the enterprise CRM service allowed AllianceBernstein's wholesalers to successfully manage customer appointments on the road.
Company Overview
EmployOn
is a job database with over 7 million jobs available to employers, recruiters, job seekers and workforce development professionals. EmployOn uses concept-based technology to search, match, and manage job information.
Challenges
EmployOn wished to update their resources while reducing the costs associated with maintaining local development. At the time, EmployOn had five database serves, four separate development servers, and over one hundred production servers, all of which needed to be consolidated in order to reduce the amount of time required to maintain the infrastructure. They also wished to increase overall search relevancy and speed.
LTech Solution
In order to consolidate all hardware, LTech used a VMware server capable of virtualizing all four original development servers onto one machine. Similarly LTech combined EmployOn's five database servers into one and migrated their production server infrastructure from over one hundred down to five. This significantly reduced both time and cost of maintenance. LTech also upgraded EmployOn's search system from autonomy to a Lucene search platform as part of an effort to improve search results.
Results
The client was extremely happy with the services provided. With EmployOn's new system, they were able to run more smoothly and efficiently while reducing overall IT and development costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Upgrades to their search infrastructure also helped reduce their overall IT costs and created a more efficient, user-friendly search system for both Jobs and Resumes.
Company Overview
Corning Incorporated
is the world leader in specialty glass and ceramics. Drawing on more than 150 years of materials science and process engineering knowledge, Corning creates and makes keystone components that enable high-technology systems for consumer electronics, mobile emissions control, telecommunications and life sciences.
Challenges
Corning was unsatisfied with the built-in search features of the Microsoft Commerce Server, which they used for the Corning Life Sciences Online Catalog. With a total product count of about 20K, they turned to LTech and the GSA. Corning needed a custom coded solution to modify their VB.Net built website to interact with the GSA and Commerce Server, as well as custom pricing on results and product comparison options.
LTech Solution
LTech assessed the problems and determined a solution for the Corning development team to implement. This solution included a custom feed/index process to push Corning's products into the GSA with appropriate meta-data, as well as a plan for developing a .Net bridge for the GSA. Ltech also performed all GSA admin functions during the development process and produced a deployment plan for the Corning Operations team.
Results
LTech's implementation of the Google Search Appliance gave Corning and their customers an efficient and easy-to-use product search. The search speed has improved by over 200% and has allowed Corning's users to search their products in new ways.
Company Overview
Hess Corporation
is an American oil company formed in 1919 and based in New York City. Hess focuses on the production, refinement, and transportation of oil. The company, which placed 75th in the 2007 Fortune 500 rankings, markets gas to consumers at over 1200 filling stations on the east coast of the United States.
Challenges
Hess Corporation bought 3 Google Search Appliances to power their Intranet search. A custom front-end was required to fit into their Intranet design, and they wanted to search their internal Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint systems to expose buried information to their employees.
LTech Solution
Hess chose LTech's QuickStart for Google Search Appliance solution to achieve their goals:
- Create a Custom Hess Search frontend based on current internal pages, which would allow the new GSA to integrate seamlessly into their system
- Upgrade the three GSAs to v5.0 to accommodate parametric search
- Add parametric search to provide more precise data with filtered results
- Connect the GSA to Windows Sharepoint to make their internal data searchable
- Integrate LTech's OneBox for Microsoft Exchange
Results
Hess' employees now enjoy the power of the Google Search Appliance to search internal company information, fostering collaboration and efficiency.
Company Overview
Red Dog Informatics
is a global internet and information technology company and part of The Wyanoke Group. Red Dog specializes in medical education and publishing and has a variety of services including web design and maintenance, database development, and other IT solutions.
Challenges
Red Dog Informatics was rolling out a new site for one of their sister companies and they needed improved search functionality that would deliver relevant results, support metadata drilldown, and integrate with their site design.
LTech Solution
LTech's QuickStart for Google Search Appliance allowed Red Dog to build out a successful search system. LTech customized the included parametric search capabilities in Version 5 of the Google Search Appliance to support a more sophisticated hierarchical drill-down. In addition, LTech consulted with Red Dog on best-practices for structuring their web content for crawling and outputting of results.
Results
Endocrinetoday.com
is now powered by the Google Search Appliance. User's enjoy sophisticated drill-down search functionality along with the simple power of relevant and speedy search. This solution is slated to be rolled out to more publication web sites in the future.
Company Overview
WildBlue Communications
is a satellite Internet Service Provider with more than 250,000 customers. Started in 2005 and based in Colorado, WildBlue offers satellite broadband Internet services to homes and businesses across the United States.
Challenges
After a detailed analysis of available email options including single-sign on and provisioning, WildBlue decided to move their entire customer base from their current provider to Google Apps Partner Edition. This would allow them to see significant cost savings and provide their users with the power of Google Apps.
WildBlue knew from the onset that they would need an experienced partner to set up the Google Apps configuration, handle provisioning and single sign on, as well as the critical migration of e-mails and contacts for all of their customers.
LTech Solution
LTech remotely completed this Google Apps custom set up, including Google Gadget creation, and many other custom "bells and whistles" to make Google Apps fit all of WildBlue's custom needs. LTech's SyncSuite Hosted Edition was chosen for the project.
Highlights include:
- Design and implementation of a High-Availability Customer Directory to support operations, Customer Care, Client Account Management and Google Apps Authentication.
- Full support for separation and aggregation of core business and wholesale customers - including "skin-able" interfaces and logical customer account management.
- Design and creation of a browser based Customer Management portal allowing customers to provision their own accounts, update and view account information.
- Creation of an XML interface to allow peripheral resources to provision and update core business and wholesale accounts as well as synchronize Google Apps account information.
- Design, implementation and maintenance of a HA Load Balanced Managed Hosting Platform for both Production and DR Environments.
Results
WildBlue saves more than $250,000 each month with the new solution. The solution is 100% managed by LTech in its datacenter, allowing WildBlue to focus on their core business and improving customer experience.
Working together through the transition period of moving 300,000 people from one email system to another, LTech has built a lasting relationship with WildBlue.
Company Overview
Cardinal Health provides physicians, pharmacies, and hospitals worldwide with the health care products and services they need. Cardinal’s goal is to provide better care while increasing productivity, improving safety, and reducing costs.
Challenges
Cardinal Health wanted to migrate off of their legacy mail system, which was supporting over 1000 individual Medicine Shoppe and Medicap stores located across the US. Due to increasing maintenance costs and reliability issues with their legacy system, they wanted a shift to Google Apps. Cardinal Health came to LTech for a set up and e-mail migration, custom dual delivery set up, and a 20 hour custom development, support, and training package.
LTech Solution
After coordinating with Cardinal Health IT staff, LTech was able to quickly complete a switchover to Apps. This involved implementing a dual-delivery solution which took all new incoming messages into Apps and forwarded copies to the legacy system automatically. This solution provided Cardinal Health with a more stable and reliable email system, as well as an effective plan for migrating old messages from legacy to Apps.
Within a week, LTech determined and implemented a solution to fit Cardinal's needs, which involved a time-restricted migration plan allowing for migration during off-peak hours with zero configuration adjustments for Cardinal Health.
Results
By providing migration support both before and after the transition, Cardinal Health IT was able to considerably reduce their email infrastructure management time.
Company Overview
Gallaudet University is the first U.S. college for the education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Established by a philanthropist in 1856 and located in Washington, D.C., Gallaudet is the only university in the United States in which all programs are designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
Challenges
Gallaudet wanted to upgrade their email system from OutBlaze to a more user-friendly system such as Google Apps. They turned to LTech for assistance with migrating their current addresses and deleting suspended accounts.
LTech Solution
LTech provisioned SyncSuite for Google Apps into the Gallaudet environment and built a custom capture application to obtain addresses and passwords.
Results
Gallaudet University received a robust email solution that fit their needs and saved them time and budget. The custom capture application allowed users to perform the email migration at their own pace.
Company Overview
The University of Winnipeg was established in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1967 as a public educational institution. The school focuses on quality undergraduate education.
Challenges
The University of Winnipeg was rolling out Google Apps to take advantage of the superior cost-of-ownership and features compared to other collaboration platforms. They required Single Sign On (SSO) and integration with their User Directory to complete a successful implementation and drive user adoption.
LTech Solution
LTech customized a stock proof-of-concept to create a university branded implementation. LTech integrated with a redundant LDAP source for high availability single sign-on authentication. The system was implemented using Java/J2EE.
All work was performed remotely and the system was up and running within weeks from project kickoff.
Results
With a customized design layout combined with SSO for redundant authentication systems, the University of Winnipeg was able to implement Google Apps and easily plug into existing student information directories.
Company Overview
New Mission Systems International is a non-profit agency that provides missionary training, spiritual counseling, crisis care, and funding to evangelical communities around the world.
Challenges
New Mission Systems International was having difficulty gaining access to the internet and their email server in certain areas. Due to the organization's global reach, email was either limited or unavailable in some of their remote missions. They wanted a more reliable email solution for their 200 users.
LTech Solution
LTech migrated all of New Mission Systems International's users from Everyone.net's hosted email solution. To coordinate the transition to Google Apps, the migration and cutover were coordinated during an international gathering overseas to relay this information to all members.
Results
New Mission Systems International was able to take advantage of their full email migration and completed solution by the morning after their conference.
Company Overview
The Federation of American Scientists is a non-profit organization founded by scientists in 1945. Their goal is to bring their knowledge and experience to national decisions. The first projects of the FAS focused on researching nuclear power and controlling nuclear weapons.
Challenges
The Federation of American Scientists wanted to migrate 50 users from a hosted Red Condor mail solution to Google Apps.
LTech Solution
LTech completed the mail migration for FAS and assisted with transitioning contact and calendar data from users' workstations.
Results
The migration and transition went smoothly. With free mailboxes for non-profit organizations, The Federation of American Scientists was able to cut costs while enjoying the convenience of Google Apps.
Company Overview
The State College Area School District is a large school district in central Pennsylvania that includes public schools in the Borough of State College and five surrounding townships. The district operates 10 elementary schools, three secondary schools, and charters four schools for operation.
Challenges
State College Area was running an Active Directory environment and was interested in integrating it with Google Apps.
LTech Solution
LTech provided account synchronization, including configuration of the apps provisioning API and single sign-on. After integrating the synchronization scripts into SCASD's environment, LTech fully implemented the scripts using user email addresses as an account link between their Active Directory and Google Apps.
Results
SCASD is happy with their synchronized Active Directory and no longer has to waste time manually editing user information in Google Apps.
Company Overview
The School District of Clayton in Missouri is composed of a network of six schools educating students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. All educators and administrative staff are committed to providing a well-rounded education encouraging good character, knowledge, and wisdom.
Challenges
Clayton needed provisioning for their Active Directory.
LTech Solution
LTech configured Google Apps to automatically sync with Clayton's Active Directory.
Results
The sync solution was straightforward and successful.
Company Overview
The University of La Verne is a private research university in La Verne, California. Founded in 1891, the university is comprised of five colleges and a regional campus administration. La Verne offers an array of degrees, including bachelor, master, and doctoral.
Challenges
La Verne wanted to migrate their 16,000 students from a locally hosted Mirapoint mail solution to Google Apps. They also required a sync solution that would automatically create accounts in Apps from their LDAP server.
LTech Solution
LTech determined a solution for La Verne that included Apps configuration, initial provisioning, sync, and email alias importer script implementation. LTech migrated all student mailboxes, set up single sign-on services to interface with the University's Directory Services, and implemented sync scripts to manage user account changes and new students.
Results
The University of La Verne received a solution that met their needs. Students now only need to log in once to access Google Apps and their existing web portals, and La Verne's LDAP server automatically syncs users in Apps.