Expertise

Cloud Providers:

• Amazon Web Services (Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and Simple Storage Service (S3))
• RightScale
• Rackspace Platform and Rackspace Cloud Servers
• Dyn, Inc.

Project Features:

• Consolidation of a multi-tenant physical data center to cloud computing providers
• Based on each tenant's cost constraints and application features, several different cloud providers were selected
• Realized roughly 50% cost savings over physical data center

Hosting Infrastructure:

• For Linux tenants, RightScale was selected to provide structured, scripted application deployment. In addition, load-based auto-scaling was implemented
• For cost-constrained clients where RightScale wasn't feasible, Rackspace Cloud was selected
• For Windows tenants, a VMWare Infrastructure cluster was provisioned on Rackpace Platform (Rackspace Private Cloud)
• Hybrid implementation for one tenant that required back end services beyond what a virtual machine could provide. In this case, Rackspace Platform was used for the back end while the more cost effective Rackspace Cloud Servers were used for front end nodes
• Anycast DNS provided by Dyn, Inc.
• Performance Monitoring and Alerting implemented using Zenoss
• Used Amazon's geographically diverse 'Availability Zones' to provide DR and off-site backups

Development Tools:

• J2EE EJB3 Session and Entity Beans
• JBoss Application Server
• JSR-311 (Jersey)
• EJB3Unit EJB unit testing harness
• Cobertura code coverage analysis
• JAXB / XSD
• JRuby/Ruby On Rails
• MySQL

Application Features:

• Back end 'system of record' for handheld and online consumer gaming application
• Digital asset inventory and transaction management
• Cryptographic signatures on all digital assets used by both back end system and handheld device to verify authenticity of data
• Factory initialization application for initializing firmware and 'starter packs' of digital assets on handheld device
• EJB3Unit test coverage of all business methods
• Integration by other component teams via a JSR-311 RESTful API using schema defined in XSD
• Ruby on Rails application for ad hoc API-level testing and example request/response traces for use by other component teams

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Deployed on CentOS 5 virtual machines
• Horizontal scaling by adding additional application server nodes
• Master/replica MySQL database configuration could scale to 20,000+ concurrent players

Development Tools:

• Ruby on Rails (RoR)
• RJS (Ruby AJAX/DHTML/Javascript)

Application Features:

• Voting and Ranking systems for selecting monthly winners
• Idea Posting/Searching
• Idea advice and feedback submission
• Event based email notifications
• Backoffice for site administration and reporting
• News/Events posting system

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Deployed on Open Solaris Servers
  
• Applications and services managed via the solaris Service Management Facility (SMF)
  
• Ruby on Rails processes are Mongrel instances that are load balanced via Apache mod_proxy_balancer
  
• PostgreSQL RDBMS

Development Tools:

• Ruby on Rails (RoR)
  
• RJS (Ruby AJAX/DHTML/Javascript)

Application Features:

• Unique DHTML User Interface for Campaign Creation
  
• Campaign to solution matching engine
  
• Portfolio Management
  
• Backoffice for site data administration and reporting

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Deployed on Linux servers
  
• MySQL RDBMS
  
• Ruby on Rails deployed using the Rubyworks production stack
• Ruby
• Rails
• Mongrel
• HAProxy Load Balancer
• Monit monitoring tool
• runit process controller

Development Tools:

• Ruby on Rails (RoR)
  
• Flash (External Interfaces, XSPF data exchanging)
  
• RJS (Ruby AJAX/DHTML/Javascript)
  

Application Features:

• Building an application development platform for a proprietary OO (object oriented) database
  
• Built a custom ActiveRecord adapter to interface to OO database
  
• Applications built on the platform were accessible both online and offline, both locally and remotely through the use of a proprietary reverse proxy network service
  
• OpenID application authentication
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Leveraged Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), SQS (Simple Queue Service) and EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) for a completely virtualized Development, QA and Production environment - Amazon Web Services provides all network, data center and server infrastructure.

Development Tools:

• Java Struts webapp on standalone Tomcat
  
• MySQL RDBMS
  
• JBoss Messaging JMS provider
  
• JUnit Unit Testing Framework
  

Application Features:

• Web application with both Web and WAP front-ends
  
• Messaging layer for distribution of messages to users via conventional SMTP email, SMS over SMTP and SMS over SMPP
  
• SMPP messaging transceiver for distribution and reception of messages to/from SMS aggregator
  
• Distributed SMPP messaging transceiver for delivering messages at high rates based on priority (i.e. emergency alerts)
  
• Parsing of inbound SMTP and SMPP messages for content
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Linux web servers running Apache 2.0 / Mod_jk connector to Tomcat
  
• Primary read/write and replica read-only MySQL server
  
• Verisign SMS aggregation service
  

Development Tools:

• Java webapp on Tomcat
  
• Velocity MVC Templating Engine
  
• JUnit Unit Testing Framework
  
• Fitnesse Acceptance Testing Framework
  
• MySQL RDBMS
  
• JORAM JMS Provider
  

Application Features:

• Distribution of news and information to mobile devices.
  
• Near real-time delivery of baseball scores stats and standings.
  
• Ability for mobile user to get traffic updates and driving directions.
  
• Features to find local restaurants and movie listings.
  

Development Tools:

• Microsoft C++ / MFC
  
• Microsoft XML / XSLT
  
• Windows Active Server Pages (ASP)
  
• Microsoft SQL Server
  

Application Features:

• Accept real-time news feeds from hundreds of sources
  
• Normalize news feeds
  
• Enrich news content with automated categorization and meta-data extraction
  
• 24x7 high availability requirements
  
• Distribution of custom news feeds to hundreds of customers using various formats and transports
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Web servers running Microsoft IIS
  
• Database cluster running Microsoft SQL Server
  
• Cisco Network, Firewall, Routers and CSS load Balancer
  
• Multiple ISPs using BGP-4
  
• Co-location hosting facility in Dulles, VA - 24x7 managed
  

Development Tools:

• Microsoft C#
  
• Microsoft C++
  
• Microsoft .NET

Application Features:

• Designed and developed Narrator, a text-to-speech utility for people who are blind or have low vision. Narrator reads what is displayed on the screen–the contents of the active window, menu options, or text that has been typed. Narrator makes use of Microsoft Windows User Interface (UI) Automation which is the new accessibility framework for Microsoft Windows. The Narrator application was also instrumental in testing the UI Automation framework. The project included writing managed code for the Narrator application and writing native interfaces for keyboard hooking and interfacing with the speech synthesizer.

• Implemented a patent-pending algorithm for superimposing a "magnifying lens" above the mouse cursor for low vision users without the use of driver chaining or other fragile hardware-level hooks. Created several magnification modes that allowed pan-and-scan, magnifying glass, and cursor tracking.

Development Tools:

• JBoss J2EE Server with embedded Tomcat Servlet Container
  
• Velocity MVC Templating Engine
  
• PostgreSQL RDBMS
  
• Lucene Search Index
  
• Microsoft Visual Basic for "fat" client
  

Application Features:

• Hosted multimedia vendor catalogues
  
• Photo uploads with automatic resizing and storage
  
• Catalog items were searchable by keyword or by category, price, etc
  
• Vendors were able to create multiple users and grant fine-grained access to their users for catalog maintenance, order fulfillment, reporting, and various other functions
  
• Multiple "pricing sheets" could be maintained and individual customers could be granted access to special pricing
  
• Win32 "Fat" client application for high-volume users
  

System Features:

• State kept in the database
  
• Supported a load balancer without needing sticky sessions
  
• Catalog items were indexed in the background to maximize search performance
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Red Hat Linux
  
• Apache
  
• JBoss
  
• PostgreSQL database
  
• Cisco Network, Firewall, Routers and CSS load Balancer
  
• Multiple ISP's using BGP-4
  

Development Tools:

• JBoss J2EE Server with embedded Tomcat Servlet Container
  
• Velocity MVC Templating Engine
  
• PostgreSQL RDBMS
  
• JBoss MQ persistent JMS Topics with durable subscriptions
  

Application Features:

• Template-based content creation (Newsletters, Promotions, Press Releases, etc)
  
• "Microsoft Word"-style web-based editing interface for control of formatting
  
• Automatic photo sizing and storage
  
• Scheduled campaign delivery
  
• Detailed campaign reporting; including Open, Bounce, Opt-out, and Click rates
  
• Categorization of mailing lists into customer-defined categories
  
• Hosted "sign up forms" to allow customers to directly gather email addresses into database
  

System Features:

• State kept in the database
  
• Supported a load balancer without needing sticky sessions
  
• Distributed mail delivery engine using JBOSSMQ for cluster communication; Send rates of up to 100,000 emails per hour per server (scales linearly by adding more servers)
  
• Automatic parsing and processing of bounced messages
  
• Automatic processing of opt-out requests
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Linux web servers running RHEL
  
• Apache
  
• JBoss
  
• PostgreSQL database
  
• Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) for asset hosting
  
• Sendmail for bounce processing
  
• Cisco Network, Firewall, Routers and CSS load Balancer
  
• Multiple ISP's using BGP-4
  

Development Tools:

• JBoss J2EE Server with embedded Tomcat Servlet Container
  
• Adobe Flash MX
  
• Velocity MVC Templating Engine
  
• PostgreSQL RDBMS
  
• MySQL
  
• PhpBB Message Forums
  

Application Features:

• "IQ" rating system learned a player's skill level based on playing performance and was highly resistant to intentional skewing by the player
  
• Both real-time multiplayer and individual score-based tournament versions of the game
  
• Ability to Create new Rooms and Tournaments
  
• Email notifications when new Tournaments available and at the end of Cash tournaments
  
• Cash tournament jackpots and prize payout based on number of player entries
  
• Fine-grained back office control over game content, customer data, billing access, etc
  
• Content management system for maintaining and automatically detecting duplicate (or similar) content
  
• Message Forums for players to build a community
  
• "Sample" feature to allow unregistered visitors to view and play against subscribed players but not have scores permanently recorded (up sell opportunity)
  

System Features:

• Gaming Engine was responsible for: guaranteeing unique questions for a given game session, ensuring game fairness by appropriately selecting difficulty during each turn, and providing assurance that the player was not tampering with their session
  
• Multiplayer Game Engine supported both direct TCP connection and HTTP Tunneling
  
• Automatic credit card billing system (Payflow Pro and FirePay)
  
• Very detailed logging of game performance, timing statistics, and individual question difficulty
  
• Management reporting system and dashboard
  
• State kept in the database
  
• Supported a load balancer without needing sticky sessions
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Red Hat Linux
  
• Apache
  
• JBoss
  
• PostgreSQL database
  
• MySQL database
  
• Cisco Network, Firewall, Routers and CSS load Balancer
  
• Multiple ISP's using BGP-4
  
• Co-location hosting facility in Netherlands Antilles
  

Development Tools:

• BEA Weblogic J2EE Server
  
• Java Server Pages (JSP)
  
• Oracle Database
  
• Sonic MQ JMS Message Bus
  
• Sun Solaris
  

Application Features:

• Robust Java applet for buying and selling products
  
• Real-time updates on bids and offers
  
• Numerous Buying/Selling strategies
  

System Features:

• State kept in the database
  
• Supported a load balancer without needing sticky sessions
  
• Matching engine
  
• Ability to maintain client to server connections via TCP or HTTP Tunnel
  
• Back office for maintaining users, products, access levels, etc.
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Sun Servers
  
• Apache
  
• Bea Weblogic Application Server
  
• Oracle Database
  
• Sonic MQ
  
• Cisco Network, Firewall, Routers and CSS load Balancer
  
• Multiple ISP's using BGP-4
  
• Co-location hosting facilities in New York & London
  

Development Tools:

• Initially developed on Windows/IIS and deployed on Sun. We then migrated to developing on Linux/Apache
  
• Adobe Cold Fusion Templating Engine
  
• Oracle Database Server
  

Application Features:

• Community Forums
  
• Online Searchable price guides containing millions of Comics and Collectables
  
• Online Portfolios (public/private) that allow users to track the value of their collections. Public portfolios viewable by all members.
  
• Exchange: Sellers could post items for sale and buyers could make offers to buy. Buyers could also post items that they are looking for and sellers could search for potential buyers
  
• Management reporting system and dashboard
  
• Content management system for writers to submit stories and editors to stage & publish content
  
• E-commerce Shopping
  

System Features:

• State kept in client cookies
  
• Supported a load balancer without needing sticky sessions
  
• Data Import supporting massive updates to price guides
  
• Home grown content management system
  
• Credit Card processing for subscribers
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Sun Web and Database servers running Solaris
  
• Apache (StrongHold)
  
• Oracle database
  
• MySQL
  
• Cisco Network, Firewall, Routers and CSS load Balancer
  
• Fully managed hosting facility in Boston
  

Development Tools:

• Java Application Server
  
• Adobe Cold Fusion
  
• Microsoft SQL Server
  
• Microsoft Visual Basic for in-house "fat" client
  

Application Features:

• Classified ad order entry
  
• Integration with credit card processor and ERP system
  
• Photo content management
  
• Micro-sites for car dealers
  
• Win32 "Fat" client application for call center workers
  

System Features:

• State kept in the database for Newspaper system and in cookies for Web system
  
• Supported a load balancer without needing sticky sessions
  
• New content is automatically staged and deployed for public viewing weekly
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Web servers running Windows
  
• IIS web servers
  
• Database cluster running Windows and SQL Server
  
• Adobe Cold Fusion
  
• BEA Weblogic Server
  
• Cisco Network, Firewall, Routers and CSS load Balancer
  
• Multiple ISP's using BGP-4
  

Development Tools:

• BEA Weblogic Java Application Server
  
• Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP)
  
• Thunderstone Text Search Engine
  
• Microsoft SQL Server
  

Application Features:

• Person-to-person auctions with various auction formats and buy-it-now
  
• Rating system similar to eBay
  
• Integration with credit card processor and ERP system
  
• Supported hundreds of private label sites that could be configured in 2 hours
  
• Management reporting system and dashboard
  

System Features:

• State kept in a proprietary, clustered Java application (client did not want cookies)
  
• Supported a load balancer without needing sticky sessions
  
• Category pages were cached by an application that continuously spidered the database and built web content automatically
  

Hosting Infrastructure:

• Microsoft IIS web servers
  
• Database cluster running Microsoft SQL Server
  
• Sun Server running Thunderstone
  
• BEA Weblogic Server
  
• Cisco Network, Firewall, Routers and CSS load Balancer
  
• Multiple ISP's using BGP-4