Success Stories:

A Sample of Fourthought's Customer Success Stories

Sun

Sun is looking to glean value from the knowledge inherent in all the documentation, specifications, FAQ's, HOWTOs, support records, and catalogs that represent the enormous body of products and services provided by the company. The department responsible for this knowledge-management (KM) initiative has engaged Fourthought, because of their expertise in XML-based KM technologies such as Resource Description Framework (RDF). The main work product is a prototype applications that allows Sun customers to help themselves in support scenarios by correlating user profile information, product information, and support information boundaries of language, product and customer expertise. This prototype is built on 4Suite Server XML middleware. In addition, Fourthought is training Sun personnel on KM techniques.

Phillips Petroleum

The Geosciences Division of Phillips Petroleum provides the research foundation for the company's worldwide oil and gas exploration effort. They needed a user-friendly, extensible tool for assembling, executing and displaying the results of a complex series of scientific calculations. Now under development, the application uses an easily visualized electrical circuit metaphor. The user can select from a variety of 'chips' representing data sources and mathematical formulas, connecting them using 'wires', and display the results through a graphical interface.

Technologies chosen for the project include XML and the Python programming language. XML helps Phillips researchers scattered across the globe to share a wide variety of scientific data. Python provides a feature-rich and highly maintainable base for application development.

Zembu Labs

Zembu Labs develops systems that allow globally distributed enterprises to deploy efficient and fault-tolerant applications on the Internet. This includes configuration and network management of sophisticated arrays of hardware. They use XML to manage configurations and hardware profiles, and Fourthought was brought in to provide expertise on XML schemas, techniques, complementary technologies and best practices.

Quovadx (formerly XCare)

Quovadx provides systems that connect healthcare providers with insurers and other participants in healthcare transactions. This includes look-up of healthcare coverage for beneficiaries, and claims made on behalf of beneficiaries. XML, including XML variations on traditional ANSI X12 EDI healthcare transaction, is a pervasive technology at Quovadx, and they required in-depth expertise on XML, XSLT, XML/Java integration and other key technologies. Fourthought was brought in to improve applications, train XCare.net personnel on XML technologies, and to provide guidance on further XML development.

iWitness.net

The client was developing a secure electronic archival system. They needed to be able to access the data in many formats so XML was used as an external interface for the data. The archived blob of data was wrapped in an XML document that contained information about history, access rights, virtual location, and actual storage information. The XML could be returned fragmented based on an accessors access rights. The data then needed to be sent across the Internet in various formats including HTTP, and SMTP. XSLT was used as a standard way to translate the XML data into these other formats. Lastly, we used XPath in the client applications to extract pieces of information from the XML document as needed.

MedWired.com

The client was developing a Web portal system for building medical practice information sites. They required quick time to market, extensibility, and the ability to make basic intelligent inferences based on the data. Fourthought first of all assisted in the analysis, assessing the client's business goals in order to find the places where XML and related technologies could be used most effectively. Then we assisted them in writing a white paper that covered the XML and knowledge architecture design. This paper landed them key partners and investors in their specialty of developing portals for medical practices. We then worked in the design phase, developing appropriate XML and RDF formats for the XML processing tier, and developing the overall system architecture. Finally, we helped implement the system, taking care of the XML processing, distributed function, and database connectivity, making the deployment of the functioning system for the first major client.

Veripost (A.K.A. IECOA.net)

The client is developing a system for managing address changes for e-mail providers. They required a system that allows clients to request and assert address change information on a batch basis. Their partners are interested in XML-based formats because of their line-of-business applications that support XML output. Fourthought worked with Veripost to develop the schemata for requests and responses, and to draft documentation allowing partners to easily use the Veripost data formats. Fourthought executed all aspects of the schema design, including content model, data-typing, constraints, XML namespace issues, versioning and extensibility.

The Network for Strategic Missions

The Network for Strategic Missions (http://strategicnetwork.org) is an on-line knowledgebase and medium presenting 10-12 Web sites to a large community all over the world. They needed to communicate and exchange information ranging from articles to tips. Many of the audience do not have reliable Internet access and Strategic Networks wished to distribute CDROMs of their content. They wanted the CDROM-based content to be as usable as the content on their Web site, and they wanted to be able to gather updates of both the material and the viewing application itself whenever the user has an Internet connection. Given the nature of their audience, usability was very important to Strategic Networks, and so they needed steps to be taken towards an integrated solution accessible to even the modest of users.

XploreNet

XploreNet is a Web developer that was under contract to develop an e-commerce site for a consumer postal services company. They needed the ability to look up shipping rates from several shipping companies, two of which use XML as their information exchange format. They required a partner familiar with the efficient development of XML processing code to write a wrapper that extracts shipping quotes from the XML sent by the shipping companies. Fourthought developed an application that abstracted the necessary XML processing for handling the complex Shipping information formats, giving the XploreNet developer a COM object that handles the processing.

Affina

Fourthought developed a series of web-based applications for Affina, including a geographic-information system for on-line where-to-buy queries, an internal time-tracker for integration into JD Edwards One-World, and a search and clipping system for gathering market data from Usenet posts and e-mail lists. Fourthought developed pioneering applications using the emerging XML standard for call-center agent knowledgebases, customer-contact forms, and Web-based applications for customer self-help.

Digital Creations

We integrated XML technologies such as DOM and XSLT into their popular Zope Application Server and Content Management system.

ABF's eProvider Network

In an effort to help ABF Freight System's customers find eCommerce solution providers, ABF established the eProvider Network. Fourthought is one of the few companies' chosen as a leading technology firm, Web development group and software vendor that may help you in your eCommerce efforts.