4-page Case Study - Posted 5/30/2007
Views: 433
Rate This Evidence:
U.K. Education Consultancy Maintains Leading Position with On-Demand Technical Experts
Tribal Group offers software solutions and consultancy to the United Kingdom education sector. It wanted to ensure that its technology roadmap and products built using Microsoft® products and technologies were aligned to support future directions and that its software architecture followed best practices. As part of the Microsoft Partner Advantage programme, Tribal engaged an application development consultant (ADC), who offered support in a variety of areas, including architecture reviews and research and development assistance. Through regular meetings and a close working relationship, Tribal has increased its in-house expertise with an ADC who understands its needs and can call on other specialist ADC advisers when particular expertise is required. This helps the company bring better products to market within tight timescales and identify how it can use new technologies to offer a higher quality of service to its clients.
Situation
Tribal Group is one of the most experienced and innovative educational consultancies in the United Kingdom (U.K.), delivering a wide range of services across the sector—from early schooling to higher education. Its clients include one in three colleges in England and Wales, half of the colleges in Scotland, more than half of all U.K. local authorities, and one-third of the work-based learning providers. Learning and skills councils and government agencies are also customers.
Tribal has been providing learning providers with managed services for more than 20 years and has particular expertise in information management, e-learning, benchmarking, and inspection. It is a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner in two competencies—as an independent software vendor and for its networking infrastructure solutions.
The software and managed IT services division at Tribal is responsible for developing applications, custom-built solutions, and contract-based projects. This work is carried out by development teams across the country. For example, the Norwich-based team leads the development of the company’s educational software for local authorities, while the Sheffield office is responsible for the market-leading Education Business System (ebs) product used by further education colleges.
Tribal uses its own code libraries—called the Unified Application Framework (UAF)—to underpin its software development work on the latest version of ebs (known as ebs4) and other products. Neil O’Connor, Technology Officer at Tribal, says: “UAF gives us tools to develop highly configurable screens, render a user interface for Web and desktop clients, and offer an independent database access layer to meet ongoing client and internal requirements.”
Such requirements arise from technological developments, such as changes in software architecture, databases, and programs used by clients. Tribal has to ensure that its software architecture roadmaps, development tools, and products are capable of meeting these ongoing challenges. Even with a pool of talented developers, however, the group can find it difficult to stay ahead and maintain its market-leading position while fulfilling its business obligations.
Solution
Tribal decided to bring in Microsoft expertise when it began migrating its ebs platform to the Microsoft .NET Framework. O’Connor says: “After the board approved the strategic decision to migrate, we presented a case to invest in some specialist Microsoft advice. We were already a Microsoft partner, and our partner account manager suggested we engage an application development consultant (ADC) as part of the Microsoft Services Partner Advantage programme.”
Microsoft Services Partner Advantage is a comprehensive, flexible, and cost-effective programme that helps partners of all types and sizes better develop, deploy, and support Microsoft solutions.
Tribal received designated Microsoft ADC Jonathan Swift, who offered expertise such as research, design advice, and guidance on demand. Swift has undertaken detailed reviews of technology architecture, application design, and code across several projects. His recommendations are based on broad industry experience and Microsoft best practice. This will ensure Tribal has a coherent overall IT architecture that takes full advantage of underlying Microsoft technologies and is fully aligned to the Microsoft technology roadmap.
For example, Tribal is now making extensive use of Windows® Presentation Foundation (WPF)—the graphical subsystem feature of the .NET Framework 3.0—in its ebs4 and UAF systems. Andrew Morris, Software Developer at Tribal, says: “We have been developing with WPF for about a year. Jonathan Swift has supported us right from the beginning, helping us understand the principles behind it and working through the entire development process with us. We have someone to troubleshoot to whenever needed, research key topics, and offer advice when we identified a problem and were unable to resource it ourselves.”
Swift worked with Tribal to set out a service delivery plan that identified the type of assistance the company needed. He arranged regular status meetings to review application development progress against this plan, ensuring Tribal developers were fully involved and informed throughout. He also acts as the company’s point of contact for a senior team of ADC specialists. This helps further mitigate the risks associated with wide-scale implementations such as ebs4.
In another project, Tribal took advantage of access to Microsoft testing facilities. O’Connor says: “We used some of our ADC hours to conduct performance testing at the scalability labs in Reading. Our Norwich team spent nearly a week ensuring a new application could scale to hundreds of users without a performance hit.”
Benefits
By having a designated ADC to support development and strategy, Tribal has gained a long-term strategic asset that gives it access to several areas of know-how that helps it maintain its market-leading position. Products can be brought to market on time. Software architectures and roadmaps are better aligned, and early access to new technologies ensures Tribal can incorporate these into new products quickly and effectively, building on proofs of concept with the support of Microsoft expertise and testing resources.
Consultant Becomes Part of Team
In Swift, Tribal has more than a Microsoft consultant: He is a long-term strategic asset who understands the company’s business, culture, and methodology. This deep understanding means Tribal can use its ADC’s in-depth knowledge of Microsoft products and technologies to help adopt new developments smoothly and effectively and align its strategy with the Microsoft technology roadmap.
This ensures Tribal can mitigate the risks associated with the development of new products, such as during the migration to the .NET Framework for the new version of ebs. O’Connor says: “We were in a market-leading position in the further education sector and made the decision to effectively re-launch our product. This has obviously been a major deal for our customers. It was a very risky strategy for us in several ways—we have risked alienating our customers and losing new and existing business because we have chosen to modernise, and potentially destabilise, our product.
“We needed as much support from Microsoft as possible during this time, and we had this due to our ADC. He has been invaluable. We have ensured our low-level technical and high-level architectural decisions are strategically aligned with Microsoft. Swift has helped us follow best practice and avoid performance and scalability traps, security problems, and situations that might make life unnecessarily hard.”
Fast-Track Access to Specialist Know-How
Tribal now has a trusted advisor with a deep understanding of both the company’s activities and Microsoft expertise that can be drawn on at any time. It can also tap into the wider ADC team for guidance and advice on specific challenges, helping it to meet customised projects for established clients, deepen its business relationships, and get products to market on time.
What’s more, fast access to Microsoft specialists means that Tribal can quickly and confidently respond to specialist consultancy requests from clients. O’Connor says: “A college in north-east England that was an existing client of ours asked us if we could help them with a custom-built project to develop an integrated security model using Microsoft Identity Integration Server. With Swift’s advice, we fulfilled that customer’s requirements.”
Technologies Implemented Faster
Morris says: “Another example is that we didn’t have time in the office to research the printing support offered by Windows Presentation Foundation, so we assigned Swift. He came back with documentation and examples, so we ran with it and brought advanced printing support into our product. He’s been a key player from the beginning—from helping our understanding of WPF to rolling out our new timetabling application.
“The research Swift did for us meant we could include printing functionality in the first release, which is essential for a timetabling application. Colleges need to plan which rooms are allocated, where tutors are teaching, and on what days. It is important that customers can print out a view of this information and put it on notice boards. Without Swift’s input, we wouldn’t have been able to include that feature in version one, and we would have had some disgruntled customers.”
Testing Ensures Products Ready for Market
Access to the state-of-the-art lab facilities at Microsoft helped Tribal ensure one of its new products for the local authority market was sufficiently resilient to cope with the expected risks associated with wide-scale implementation across its customer base.
O’Connor says: “Access to the Microsoft scalability lab in Reading meant that we could provide our customers with some peace of mind that the product would be reliable under user load.”
Relationship Maintains Competitive Edge
The long-term nature of the ADC relationship means that Tribal has developed a close association, which has helped streamline the group’s adoption of new technologies.
Morris says: “Swift has helped us make the most of several technologies across the group. This has meant we can better fulfil our customers’ needs. They expect a certain level of functionality and quality of service, and, with our ADC, we are much more likely to be able to achieve that. Plus, our customers appreciate knowing that we have a close working relationship with Microsoft—they perceive this as an important benefit.”
Microsoft Services
Microsoft Services helps customers and partners discover and implement high-value Microsoft solutions that generate rapid, meaningful, and measurable results. As the consulting, technical support, and customer service arm of the world’s leading software company, Microsoft Services enables the successful adoption, deployment, and use of Microsoft solutions and technologies for all customers, from the individual to the enterprise.
For more information about Microsoft Services, go to:
www.microsoft.com/microsoftservices
For More Information
For further information about Microsoft products and services, please visit www.microsoft.com/uk or call 0870 60 10 100*.
For hearing impaired customers with a Minicom, contact: 0870 50 30 400*.
*Lines are open 8am-6pm Monday to Friday. Please note, numbers prefixed 0870 will be charged at national call rates. For details of national call rate charges, please contact your telecommunications provider.
For more information about Tribal Group products and services, call 01285 886020 or visit the Web site at: www.tribalgroup.co.uk
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2007
