Yudu Media are a market leader and innovator in the digital publishing industry. They approached Softwire to develop their next-generation digital publishing platform designed to allow users to self-publish feature-rich digital publications accessed via a standard web browser using a page-turning interface.
Softwire worked closely with Yudu Media during an initial consultancy phase to refine the feature set and produce a detailed functional specification, before developing, testing and deploying the new software. We worked as an autonomous development team but communicated regularly with Yudu Media's own project manager to ensure the project schedule stayed on track.
The software comprises a number of distinct interacting components, as follows.
- A Flash-based page-turning reader application that is downloaded and executed within the user's browser.
- A sophisticated web-based publishing interface, through which publishers can upload raw PDF files and configure how the publication should appear to users, e.g. by adding rich media, hyperlinks, table of contents and order forms etc.
- A statistics server to record detailed statistics on how users read the publications, e.g. which pages they look at and which links they click on, and a reporting web interface to allow advertisers to view these aggregated figures.
- Dedicated PDF processing servers to do the heavy-lifting of converting raw PDF files to a Flash-compatible format, to provide a high level of scalability.
- Public ePublishing marketplace allowing users to organise, promote and sell their publications.
The implementation is mostly based around Java Enterprise technologies including JBoss application server, Spring MVC and Java EE (including EJB3 and Java Persistence), and uses Oracle databases.
The implementation of the ePublishing marketplace constituted a major new phase of work which was implemented using Ruby technologies, integrating with the Java portions of the system via web services. This phase of work employed an Agile development process in order to allow rapid evolution of the system based on feedback from Yudu and their customers. This approach has been highly successful, delivering results quickly and with great flexibility.
Given the scope and attention to detail of Yudu Media's requirements, this project was a significant and complex undertaking and required a relatively large team. Nonetheless, Softwire delivered the initial release and the subsequent phased feature releases on schedule whilst maintaining a high level of quality throughout. The system has been a great success with Yudu Media's existing customer base and provides them with a leading edge technology platform with which to expand their business into new markets.
Customer testimonial
“Softwire have been both professional and efficient with their design and implementation, with an emphasis on high quality feedback which has been essential to our company. We would be happy to recommend their services to anyone looking to outsource high quality design and coding of complex multi-user online services, including J2EE, Web Services and overall secure information transfer”
Tom Stone, Development Manager, Yudu Media
Spring Digital