Media in the Real World
While providing better access to rich media was important, it had to be done in a controlled way. Only certain content is appropriate for each customer. thePlatform allows Air Products to restrict content by class of customer (for example all liquid bulk gas customers). The technology even provides control right down to an individual user—johndoe@acme.com has rights to watch a particular video three times over a one week period.
To make it all come together, all of this back-end control needed to flow directly into the user experience of APDirect.
One hallmark of thePlatform media publishing system™ is that it was the first application of its type to fully embrace web-services, even before the term came into popular usage. To tie thePlatform’s hosted application to APDirect, thePlatform used Microsoft’s .NET technology to build a bridge between the systems.
When APDirect users first access the media section of the site—actually generated in real time by thePlatform’s ASP service—they are seamlessly registered and authenticated, then directed to the appropriate content library based on the type of customer account they have on APDirect.
"Every aspect of our application is web-services enabled," says Ian Blaine, co-founder and CEO of thePlatform. "But most developers don’t really want to work with web-services directly—it’s not the most user-friendly environment." Which is where .NET comes in.
Looking Forward
Fall 2004 will mark the release of thePlatform media publishing system 5.0 enterprise edition™. This milestone release includes a powerful new business rules engine, and a host of new features and functionality targeted at the enterprise—including the ability to directly manage content on enterprise CDNs, even from the hosted software service.
Version 5.0 will also offer turnkey integration with Active Directory, LDAP, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Producer 2003, Accordent PresenterPRO, and a growing list of popular enterprise applications.
Where will Air Products go from here? Cameron says there are plenty of future opportunities, and thePlatform will likely be part of it. "In today’s world we can’t be sure how our needs will change, but thePlatform has demonstrated that they’re out at the head of the curve, with proven features ready when we are."