Design Whitepapers and Ebooks

This sections provides whitepapers on Design that details on trends, analysis and latest happenings in the industry.

  • Business to Business Marketing on Search Engines - A Largely Untapped Marketing Tool
    I'm in the business of search engine marketing, so it's sometimes easy to forget that a majority of people don't really know that the industry exists, how useful it is in business to business marketing, and what a valuable marketing tool SEO can be in general. However, the fact is that a disturbing number of business executives could not tell the difference between SEO Outsourcing and REO Speedwagon (although most would probably agree that neither sounds particularly good*).
  • DITA: Four Letters You Need to Know
    � Adaptable � The Topic DTD is similar to HTML in that it specifies a set of generic elements each with different formatting such as titles, paragraphs and lists. To adapt the Topic DTD to your specific needs, DITA defines a mechanism called "specialization" that allows you to define new tags that inherit their behavior and properties from tags in Topic. Specialization allows downstream applications that are DITA-aware to handle an unknown tag by treating it as the tag from which it inherits its properties. For example, you could create a tag called "Procedure" that inherits from "Ordered List" and a tag called "Step" that inherits from "List Item." Although you may want to add specific processing for Procedure and Step to your application, a DITA-aware application that knows nothing about these tags would handle Procedure and Step as if they were Ordered List and List Item instead. For instance, a DITA-aware publishing application that knows nothing about Step would format it as if it were a List Item. Knowing the definition of DITA does not give you enough background for understanding its implications. So now let's start the story. As with XML itself, DITA embodies a few simple that have profound implications.
  • Wall Street Systems Case Study
    Wall Street Systems is a leading provider of corporate and bank treasury, central banking, FX trade processing, and global cross-asset back-office software. Founded in 1986, it is renowned for its integrated and scalable solutions that improve efficiency, workflow, and control of critical financial operations. With a sterling reputation for delivering service excellence, Wall Street Systems currently serves more than 300 clients worldwide, and its software powers millions of transactions representing trillions of dollars every day. The winner of numerous industry awards, Wall Street Systems counts among its clients Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Bank of New York, Citibank, Nordea, Royal Bank of Scotland, GE Capital, Porsche, Merck, Philips, Procter & Gamble, BP, and other leading global enterprises. Wall Street Systems is a leading provider of corporate and bank treasury, central banking, FX trade processing, and global cross-asset back-office software. Founded in 1986, it is renowned for its integrated and scalable solutions that improve efficiency, workflow, and control of critical financial operations. With a sterling reputation for delivering service excellence, Wall Street Systems currently serves more than 300 clients worldwide, and its software powers millions of transactions representing trillions of dollars every day. The winner of numerous industry awards, Wall Street counts among its clients Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Bank of New York, Citibank, Nordea, Royal Bank of Scotland, GE Capital, Porsche, Merck, Philips, Procter & Gamble, BP, and other leading global enterprises.
  • Savvis Symphony Dedicated and Open Tear Sheet
    Savvis Symphony Dedicated and Open expand on Savvis' rich heritage of delivering global IT infrastructure services to thousands of businesses throughout the world. Savvis Symphony Dedicated and Open services extend the utility concept by combining virtualization technology from VMware �, an industry leader, with our dedicated and multi-tenant hosting platforms. Customers are empowered with easy-to-use tools to provision new instances online as they need them based on short, flexible term commitments. This powerful combination equips your business with the tools to rapidly build, control, and customize your hosting environment to support the demands placed on your infrastructure without the burden of long-term contracts or the lead time of traditional deployments. What's more, Savvis Symphony Dedicated and Open eliminate the capital burden of investing in expensive physical server deployments that often go underutilized. As a pioneering provider of utility and virtualized services for the enterprise, we understand that the demand on your compute resources is dynamic and always shifting, and that although some demands are predictable, many are not. Every component of Savvis Symphony Dedicated and Open is based on the notion that you should be able to deploy compute resources quickly and easily when you need them, and turn off when you don't.
  • Discovery Communications Case Study
    Discovery Communications is the No. 1 nonfiction media company in the world. Through more than 100 global networks -- including Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, and Planet Green -- it reaches more than 1.5 billion subscribers in more than 35 languages in 175 countries. It also produces innovative consumer and educational products and offers online consumers a diversified portfolio of digital media services including HowStuffWorks.com. Discovery Communications is the No. 1 nonfiction media company in the world. Through more than 100 global networks -- including Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, and Planet Green -- it reaches more than 1.5 billion subscribers in more than 35 languages in 175 countries. It also produces innovative consumer and educational products and offers online consumers a diversified portfolio of digital media services including HowStuffWorks.com. Founded in 1985, Discovery Communications (Discovery) ran a highly decentralized IT operation split among sites in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States during its first few years of operation. Discovery needed to build a more centralized international infrastructure that would serve multiple regions more reliably and cost-effectively and since its primary market at that time was in the United Kingdom, it made sense locate it there.
  • Prepare to Fly: Top Animation Studio Taps HP BladeSystem for a Fourfold Jump in Efficiency
    At a movie's heart "Story is king," says Animal Logic founder, Zareh Nalbandian. He told the website Urban Cinefile that this is a key learning of his 30-year film career.1 Back in 1991, when Nalbandian founded Animal Logic, computers were a long way from being a storytelling tool--and a very long way from being able to generate an entire feature-length film. Most monitors at the time couldn't even display a color photo. Nalbandian, however, sensed the future of digital imagery. He guided Animal Logic to win acclaim for visual effects in TV commercials. And starting in 1996, his team created computer-generated imagery (CGI) for movies that include Babe, The Matrix, Moulin Rouge, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and 300. Each time out, the company's storytelling ability was sharpened. Then, in 2006, working with Directors George Miller and Kennedy Miller, Animal Logic created Happy Feet--Australia's first animated feature. The Boston Globe called it "one of the most visually ravishing CGI films yet rendered."2 Story was king--Happy Feet was crowned with an Oscar for best animated feature. So how do you top an Oscar? The consequences of server choice are enormous. "The heaviest rendering work is typically in the 6 to 12 months of production," Timbs explains.
  • PCI: A Component of the E-Commerce Strategy
    Because E-commerce is more complex than simply purchasing a shopping cart or setting up a PayPalTM account, businesses that utilize online transactions must first identify potential risks both to the consumer and to the business itself. Once risks are identified, they should then consider how well existing resources can meet those needs and mitigate risks. If the existing resources cannot sufficiently and reliably perform those functions the business should consider a solution that best fits the business and protects all parties according to PCI DSS. Rackspace� Hosting offers guidance that can help identify risk as well as assist in the development of a plan to become PCI compliant.
  • Critical Risk Factors in an E-Commerce Environment
    In an E-commerce environment, the risks associated with availability, performance, scalability and security should take priority in building a risk mitigation strategy. These factors are critical to consider even in a hosted E-commerce environment and should be addressed whether the organization is small, medium or large, currently running an Ecommerce environment, or thinking of starting an E-commerce site. Others that will find this information helpful are organizations wanting to know more about mitigating risks to an E-commerce environment as well as maximizing customer trust when using their platform. This article serves to identify various areas of risk that are commonly associated with an Ecommerce environment. It applies to a broad range of audiences from a single merchant hosting their own E-commerce site, to a hosting provider for E-commerce merchants, to a company that makes shopping cart software, or even someone looking into Cloud offerings as a solution. Because E-commerce technologies can apply to a myriad of businesses, the applicability is moreover based on a business's goals with their E-commerce platform. The Biggest Risk The overarching risk to any business doing online transactions is not having an overall Ecommerce strategy, especially when it comes to the compliance requirements of which merchant may or may not fully understand or even be aware.
  • Why Web Performance Matters: Is Your Site Driving Customers Away?
    More than ever, your Website's performance matters. The average online shopper expects your pages to load in two seconds or less, down from four seconds in 2006; after three seconds, up to 40% will abandon your site.i And performance pressure just keeps growing. To drive more sales and boost brand image, today's Websites are increasingly dependent on sophisticated technologies such as shopping tools, interactive games, and videos that attract attention, hold interest or move visitors toward your virtual shopping cart. But if the technology behind the marketing vision for your Website creates delays or fails to work properly, watch out -- your visitors may quickly abandon your site and run to the competition. Gomez' own studies reveal that lack of visitor loyalty. By analyzing page abandonment data across more than 150 websites and 150 million page views, Gomez found that an increase in page response time from 2 to10 seconds increased page abandonment rates by 38%.ii Page Response Time Drives An Increase In Page Abandonment The causes of Web dysfunction may be complex, but the lesson is simple: so-called "IT" issues that slow down your site can impact revenue, customer satisfaction and your brand -- if they're not identified, and resolved.
  • Inventory Management for a Global Supply Chain
    To respond to the opportunities--and challenges--of globalization, manufacturers are increasingly looking to IT solutions that provide standardization and visibility into the goods and materials that flow through their production facilities and supply chains. This eBook provides the buying tips and implementation advice manufacturers need to master inventory in the emerging global supply chain. Plus: By Todd Morrison, News and Features Editor, SearchManufacturingERP.com Manufacturers are looking to inventory optimization software at a time when many are short on working capital, and efficient supply chains are more important than ever. To shed some light on this trend, SearchManufacturingERP.com spoke with Lora Cecere, an expert in supply chain management (SCM) and partner with Altimeter Group, a consulting firm based in San Mateo, Calif. What is inventory optimization, and how can it be accomplished through the use of software applications? Lora Cecere: Inventory optimization is essentially the use of algorithms to determine a good level of inventory. Software for inventory optimization comes in two types. One helps you with what is the right level of inventory. Basically, it applies optimization to look at demand variability and supply variability, and be able to address what`s the right level of inventory -- how much and The second type helps you with the form and function of inventory.