A Small Company With "Big Time" Experience:

Quadrix Solutions Puts Design For eXcellence to Work for iCollege.com

With a potential one million unique visitors a month waiting in the wings, iCollege's Chief Technology Officer Bruce Dorfman was eager to get the company's new website up and running.

The plan for iCollege.com was complex; it included scores of dynamic capabilities and an abundance of rich media, especially video. With four separate audiences -- pre-college, in-college students, faculty and alumni - iCollege.com was poised to become the most comprehensive online resource for every constituency of the college community.

iCollege.com's mission is to supplement the existing web sites of over 1,200 educational institutions with practical online tools, useful content and cutting edge technology.

Great concept but, Dorfman recalled, iCollege.com had some major obstacles to overcome. "We had no equipment to host the site. No relationship with a hosting services provider," Dorfman said. "We set out to determine what would be the best architecture for doing this. Who would be a good candidate for hosting the site? We needed help from the ground up. Viant, another service provider that we were working with, suggested Quadrix Solutions."

Quadrix Solutions (www.quadrix.com), is a Piscataway, N.J.-based systems integrator and web hosting company that designs and implements eBusiness solutions at its eSolutions Centers and then supports them over the long-term at its eData Centers.

According to Tom Palmieri, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Quadrix Solutions, "We ensured that iCollege.com would see a return on its site development investment, by employing Quadrix Solutions' Design For eXcellence approach, which creates an architecture that delivers performance, reliability, scalability, security, operability, serviceability and maintainability. This guarantees our clients a quality of service that other vendors simply cannot deliver."

Choosing a hosting partner was a critical decision for iCollege. After the investment in developing the site, the company needed assurance that the architecture would deliver a site that was high performing, reliable, scalable and secure, as well as easy to operate, service and maintain. "Quadrix Solutions' approach gave us the confidence that excellence would be built into the system from the beginning," Dorfman said.

iCollege chose Quadrix after considering several solutions providers. Only Quadrix offered the enthusiasm, technological knowledge and underlying infrastructure iCollege needed to hit the ground running.

"The system architecture cannot be an afterthought, that's why it was so helpful to involve a company like Quadrix Solutions from the very beginning of the project," noted Dorfman. "Quadrix developed a very sophisticated architecture that will deliver the performance we need, while giving us tremendous scalability options for future growth. Quadrix is also very cognizant of securing our web presence. The security processes and technology Quadrix put in place are extremely thorough and comprehensive."

"This is a very complex site. It cost $5 million to create including hardware, systems, development, strategy, vendor selection, analysis, and vendor licensing. When you get into that league you can't fall short on the systems side," Dorfman maintained. "You have to do everything in balance in order to get a good site up, especially when you get to this level. iCollege had the feeling that Quadrix Solutions gave them the balance they needed."

iCollege needed a company that could work with and optimize the technology already selected, Vignette StoryServer in UNIX and Oracle environments. Quadrix Solutions, Dorfman pointed out, convinced his team they could handle all their needs.

Quadrix looked deeply into the process architecture at the heart of Vignette StoryServer and determined how those processes could be optimally deployed and made as scalable as possible. Quadrix knows that it's vital to understand the underlying technology of an application before the process can be improved.

Plus, Quadrix Solutions is affiliated with top technology vendors including Level3 Communications of Weehawken, N.J. Quadrix rents space in Level3, and then adds value to it including system administration, proactive monitoring of networks, systems, and applications, security infrastructure, and additional power protection.

"An added benefit was that Quadrix Solutions' eData Centers are built on top of Level3's facilities," added Dorfman. "This reassured us that the infrastructure was best-of-breed and had a nationwide reach, which was important to our rollout plan."

After meeting Palmieri, Dorfman knew Quadrix was the right company for iCollege.com, "Tom counseled us thoroughly before we engaged Quadrix for this project, giving us a very clear picture of what we could expect if we hired them. It was Tom's hands-on attitude and passion for service that won the business."

Quadrix Solutions' clients include AT&T, American Cyanamid, BMG Direct Marketing, BMG Entertainment, Bell Atlantic, GetMusic, LEGO Mindstorms, Medscape and SmartMoney.com.

iCollege made its decision to choose Quadrix after hearing BMGMusicService's strong recommendation of Quadrix. Dorfman said iCollege learned: "Quadrix Solutions is a small company with big time experience -- one that can deliver on what it promises"