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Case Study

GMAC Commercial Mortgage

The existing site, Pioneer, has been in place for about three years. There were some difficulties early on but the site is currently stable and is a familiar tool for it’s 2500+ users. The Intranet Project is a re-write of the technology. The stated goal for Phase 1 was to minimize new functionality and allow content management of existing content that is ported over from html pages. The prioritized business requirements, which were developed, will be used for the redesign and redevelopment of Pioneer.

Current environment included

NT 4.0/SP 6.0a, IIS 4.0, SQL Server 7.0, Active Server Pages, Frames, JavaScript and VBScript

New Environment

Share Point, as a preferred development package was evaluated. Windows 2000 Advanced Server, IIS 5.0, SQL Server 2000, Active Server Pages, NO Frames, JavaScript and VBScript

Project Goals and Objectives

The objective of this engagement was to help GMAC CM Enterprise Solutions Group on the redesign and redevelopment of their Corporate Intranet web site Pioneer based on the requirements, which were, collected during phase I of this engagement. The site was expected to have approximately 3000 users internationally, and will also be available via an extranet to subsidiaries based on content requirement and access approval.

Goals were

  1. To facilitate access to the intranet by the broadest possible range of Web users

  2. To provide Web users with an effective "entry point"

  3. To enhance the communication potential of the client’s employees with both their internal and external “customers”.

Objectives were

  1. To provide pages which are easily accessible to all Web users, regardless of equipment or physical limitations

  2. To provide low cost, professionally designed pages that exemplify straightforward content, attractive layout, and quick download time

  3. To provide non-static information on the home page and main pages, and ensure the Web site serves as a high profile resource to a global audience.

Approach

Wability recommended working in a ‘partnered’ approach with GMAC CM Enterprise Web Architecture Solutions Group using a modified JAD approach to gathering, analyzing, and prioritizing, the redesign and redevelopment of the site.

 Step

 Description
Review existing site and Technology Assessment Conducted walkthrough of site
Requirements Phase

Technology Requirements
Process Requirements
Legal and Audit Requirements
User Content Requirements
 		 Reviewed legal requirements
Reviewed privacy requirements
Reviewed audit requirements
Reviewed Technology infrastructure requirements
Reviewed Process requirements
Reviewed Corporate Communications standards
Reviewed User content requirements
Reviewed Information architecture requirements
Analysis and Design Phase Developed Functional Specs
Developed Software Specs
Developed Hardware Specs
Developed Communication, Connectivity Specs
Developed Geographic Language Factor Requirements
Implementation Phase Built Web site
Built Search Capabilities
Implemented Security Mechanism
Developed and Created Content Authorization and Management
Database Implementation
Web Applications Implementation
Infrastructure Preparation
Web User Interfaces Designed
Language Implementation
Implementation Completed
Testing and Rollout Phase Conducted System Testing
Conducted Stress Testing
Debugged Test Results
Fixes and Rollout

Technology Evaluated and Utilized

Microsoft P&M for User Authentication and Personalization

Site Server P&M gave developers a great toolset for managing large communities of users and building personalization into Web commerce solutions.

P&M gave GMAC CM the ability to

  1. Implement a variety of different authentication scenarios with the membership authentication service, including HTTP basic authentication, HTML Forms authentication, and automatic cookie authentication.

  2. Store a variety of different user attributes and preferences in a LDAP-compliant membership directory that can be accessed and manipulated by any COM client using the ADSI object model.

  3. Create personalized content based on a user's preferences quickly and easily using the Active User Object (AUO).

Active Server Pages

Microsoft developed Active Server Pages (ASP) as a server-side scripting architecture for building dynamic Web applications. With ASP, GMAC CM was able to combine client-side HTML, scripting, and ActiveX controls with server-side scripting and COM/DCOM components to create dynamic content and sophisticated Web-based applications.

Because ASP enables component-based Web development in any language, including Visual Basic, C++, and J++. This allowed our developers to leverage their existing skill sets to build browser-independent Web applications with tools and languages they already know. ASP allowed our developers to separate the programming and logic from the design and content of a Web page.