Ready, Set…Rent!

Quadrix Solutions Uses Team Approach to Bring Video Rental Website to Life

Entrepreneurs Felipe Del Corral and Rob Baines, owner of the Tinto Coffee chain in London, had a great idea that would revolutionize Internet shopping, and was sure it would take one particular neighborhood in London by storm. It was a simple plan: allow consumers to rent videos and games and purchase snacks via the Internet, and assure delivery within one hour. Del Corral could envision the virtual shopping carts filling to the brim .

Not so fast! Del Corral, icaru.com's CEO, quickly realized he was up against some major technological challenges. How would the site get populated with content? Who would manage the stock levels and track inventory? How would deliveries get scheduled so Del Corral could fulfill his "one hour delivery" promise?

The questions seemed endless, but the answers came quickly as soon as Del Corral found Quadrix Solutions -- a systems integrator and web hosting company. Having Quadrix Solutions focus on the technology issues gave Del Corral the freedom to work on several vital tasks: building the 'icaru' brand, getting more funding to further enhance the site's capabilities and developing partnerships with existing "brick & mortar" retail outlets, to minimize icaru's operating costs and maximize its operating efficiencies.

"By outsourcing the technology elements to Quadrix Solutions, we can concentrate on running the business," adds Del Corral. The Piscataway, New Jersey-based Quadrix set up icaru's entire system, providing everything needed to launch the new website, from technology strategy, to web development, and, finally, providing infrastructure support by hosting icaru.com at its eData Center.

"Felipe saw an opportunity to develop a business, and he needed a partner to build the technology foundation," explains Dean Ostergaard, Quadrix's project manager. "We designed a web-based system, where the consumer can browse the products and easily make a purchase. The system is personalized so that members can be informed about new products that reflect their interests or when something the member wants to rent becomes available."

But it's the back end of the system, the side the customer never sees, that makes Quadrix's plan for icaru.com interesting and unique from a systems design perspective. The system offers icaru the ability to track catalog and inventory management, membership, and merchandising efforts. And, perhaps most importantly, Quadrix's solution provides for a logistical component. icaru's new system is able to determine what's been ordered, where and when it needs to be delivered, and can route schedules for delivery. This is being done with a Geographical Information System (GIS). This system is able to take the "where" and "when" logistics to route the deliveries so distribution is optimized and routes are efficient.

"We looked into four different shops but we decided to go with Quadrix because they didn't say 'yes' to all our scope requests. Our request for proposal had some functionality that was simply not possible given the budget and time that we had available to us," Del Corral admits. "It is far better for a vendor to address that up front, as opposed to after the project is underway. Additionally, we felt that Quadrix wanted to build a long lasting relationship with icaru, and not just complete a project."

Quadrix succeeded in developing a solution that is scalable enough to meet icaru's projected growth. "The structure and architecture are very solid and will easily expand to incorporate future functionality. Currently, we are probably using 25 to 30 percent of the system's capacity and performance," says Del Corral.

"Our experience has been that it's not where you go, but how you get there that makes a difference," Del Corral insists. "Quadrix and icaru became one team. We share the problems as well as the achievements. If there was a problem, we never pointed fingers at each other. Instead, we spent time understanding the problem and figuring out the best way to solve it."

Quadrix doesn't finish the project and send clients on their way. Working across the pond from London in its New Jersey facilities, Quadrix is, in effect, icaru's entire IT department. "Our value added services go beyond what most vendors provide. We don't just keep the operating system, networks and applications up and running, we thoroughly understand our clients' business needs, which enables us to continually advise them on application design issues that vastly improve the site's performance, reliability and security," Ostergaard adds. "Plus, by hosting icaru's website in our facilities, they have access to immense bandwidth."

"One of the reasons that Felipe chose Quadrix is that we offer the total solution. He doesn't have to buy software from one party and hosting from another and hope those parties can work together," Ostergaard says. "Clients can be assured that we incorporate our Design for eXcellence (DFX) program into every project we take on. We sat down with the client and made sure we understood icaru's business. As true members of the client's business team, we could easily translate icaru's business needs into technical requirements. This makes it much easier to deliver customized solutions to our clients within reasonable timeframes."

icaru.com was launched four months from the date Ostergaard assembled his project team. Del Corral credits the project's fast turnaround time to Quadrix's unparalleled approach to the task. "By making sure that excellence was incorporated from the start of the project, icaru.com's system architecture reduced project risk, ensured high availability, sped time to market and improved the maintainability of the site," notes Ostergaard.

Quadrix's JAQ™ architecture (Java Applications Quickly) is another Quadrix innovation that saved icaru a tremendous amount of time and effort. JAQ not only sped the site's deployment, but it reinforced its scalability, and provides the ongoing capability for flexible content management. Thanks to JAQ, icaru can post content via a web browser as quickly as the staff can generate it, and the content can be modified quickly and easily as the need arises. This keeps content fresh and exciting, which can be a daunting task for any company, but especially a startup.

"This system will eventually expand to track demand," Ostergaard notes. "If icaru has 15 copies of a movie, they will be able to track how many copies have been rented at any one time so they will have a firm grasp on inventory control."

Del Corral is not only completely satisfied with Quadrix's work - it turned a great idea into reality at eSpeed! - but he is looking forward to a long-term relationship with the New Jersey-based firm that will continue to provide infrastructure support, strategic technology upgrades and web development for future needs.