the challenge

Thomson Medical Economics, a publisher of Trade Magazines for the medical community, needed a new platform to host their 10 magazine companion websites. The platform that had been used was obselete, due to the fact that it had been maintained by internal staff that had been downsized, as well as the fact that it did not allow for editorial control of the websites by the magazine editors. arvato systems, through its joint venture with sister company Brown Printing, was hired by Thomson Medical Economics to build this new web platform that would provide Content Management functionality, standardize the design and layout of the 10 sites, and automatically publish content from their existing print publishing system.

Medical Economics Homepage

RNWeb Homepage

the strategy

Since Thomson was concerned for both quality and cost of the product, arvato systems relied heavily on Open Source software, such as the Tomcat application server and PostGres database, to construct the new magazine website publishing platform. This, coupled with the JAVA, XML, XSL and HTML skills of the arvato systems developers, allowed Thomson to receive a flexible platform that would not carry excessive up-front or ongoing maintenance costs. The final platform included an XML-based Content Management System that allowed editors to create and publish articles, news blurbs and polls to their 10 sites without technical intervention; a tool to push magazine content from the print publishing system directly to the sites, and a tool to manage threaded discussion forums for their user community. This functionality was made easier to implement due to the standardized design and centrally stored content, which also allowed cross-title searching for the first time.

the results

arvato systems was able to deliver the fully-functional solution to Thomson Medical Economics within a 2 month development and testing cycle, and within the project budget. The individual magazine editors now have as much editorial control of their companion websites as they do with their own magazines. Also, as a result of the Open Source-based platform that is maintained by arvato systems and hosted by its sister division, arvato systems Global 24, Thomson Medical now has the enviable combination of a superior product at a significantly lower ongoing cost.

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