Case Studies
Viacom – MTV and Paramount
Achieve Internet was originally invited to participate in both the MTV and Paramount projects as Drupal Architecture Experts. MTV had completed phase one of their project however they were experiencing Performance and Scaling issues. Achieve Internet completed a thorough analysis of the current code and the project roadmap. The conclusion, unfortunately, was the current developer did not follow Drupal Best Practices and the Drupal code needed to be re-engineered.
The Paramount project, Paramount.com, was in much better shape. First they were earlier in the process. Phase one had not been completed and the developer on that project had a great deal more experience and knowledge in the Drupal platform. Achieve Internet delivered an extensive analysis suggesting minimal enhancements to the Drupal Architecture.
Both projects incorporate Flash front-ends and Drupal CMS. MTV’s Virtual World project also had a proprietary ecommerce component that integrated tightly into the Virtual World experience. In the end the Paramount project succeeded and the MTV department was shut down.
Experian
As the leader in the credit score industry, Experian collects credit data on over 3 million U.S businesses. It goes without saying that they take Security seriously. As a result they regard training and technology as a priority. Given certain website challenges that Achieve Internet is restricted to discuss, the decision was made to add Open Source technology into the existing server environment. Unlike most organizations that order a server and download the appropriate LAMP stack software, Experian required a thorough training session before any code could be developed. Achieve Internet turned to a trusted partner and a leader in the industry, Zend, the PHP company. Zend gave an impressive four-day seminar covering everything from Linux to PHP. As a result the Experian team of 20 plus people were well prepared to add the LAMP stack and Drupal to their server environment. Achieve Internet contributed a full day of Drupal training as well as ongoing development and training services.
Disney - www.idealbite.com
The ABC Family division of Walt Disney reached out to Achieve Internet for assistance on their newly acquired Idealbite.com website. The original project was a straight transfer of the current website from an Expression Engine CMS to Drupal. One constant with every large Enterprise Level project is requirements that change on a regular basis. This is where Achieve Internet’s experience really kicks in. Through a well-tested Change Order process, in addition to a thorough Architecture and Planning foundation, Achieve Internet was able to double the scope of the project by only adding one week to the project timeline.
The final project included a complete site design as well as a third party integration of an email newsletter system. The site’s basic feature was daily health tips directed towards women in the 25 to 55 age group. The site encourages women to collect these tips in their Profile account and share their favorite tips with the other members. As a result an extensive custom Registration and User Profile module needed to be engineered to ensure the highest level of user interaction.
An often over looked aspect of the project was user and data migration. In any Enterprise Level Solution it is important to allocate the appropriate resources to the data migration task. In Disney’s case this task was complicated by the inconsistency of the data and the original architecture of the Expression Engine database. Once the data was scrubbed and ported over to Drupal, getting the data to display in the Drupal format was straightforward.