How Essentialtalk Uses iChain ® and eDirectory ™ for Web Commerce Lorand L. Szojka Chief Information Officer The Essentialtalk Network
Welcome—Agenda Introduce The Essentialtalk Network Discuss value-based business principles Outline Essentialtalk’s challenges Leverage Novell eDirectory ™ Demonstrate Essentialtalk live
Introduction The Essentialtalk Network
What Is Essentialtalk? To the outside world Essentialtalk is A communications solutions provider Facilitator for presentations and training
Essentialtalk’s Clients Compaq Novell TransCanada Pipelines Canadian Hockey Association HSBC Aon Reed Stenhouse
What Our Clients Achieve Through Essentialtalk our clients achieve: Enhanced human communications Highly interactive conference calls Superior meetings to small and large groups Highly effective training and presentations
What Our Clients Achieve (cont.) In summary, our clients achieve: Substantial $$$ Savings
Essentialtalk Features—Participant High-quality audio over internet Streaming, not VOIP Access to visuals and supplementary documentation online Completely browser based No large software downloads or installations Low bandwidth requirement (56 kbps) Can access archives for replay anytime
Essentialtalk Features—Chairperson Can be anywhere in the world Can show presentations, documents, videos, and much more Can interact through audio and text Retains full control over meeting Can deliver live/archived or professionally pre- produced
Essentialtalk Features—Infrastructure Can facilitate multiple, simultaneous meetings and presentations Scalable to tens of thousands of participants without degradation Can be transparently integrated Rapid deployment without large capital expenditures
Essentialtalk’s Applications Web-enhanced conference calls Live streaming audio seminars With full audience interaction and active participation Personalized corporate communications both internal and to the public Interactive customer and investor relations Effective distance education and training Powerful global marketing, product launches/support
Business Principles Business Principles 101
Business Model—“Dot-Bomb” Think of a unique concept or idea Raise millions of dollars Grab market share at any cost Pretend to run like a business while burning through capital Hope to become profitable one day without a direct and realistic business plan Fail after the money is gone
Business Model—Value-Based Think of a unique concept or idea Research and develop concept Develop business plan with clear path to profitability Fail early and fail often Raise capital Grow sustainable, profitable product delivery Build value for shareholders Provide superior value for clients
Value-Based Business Focus Understand Return on Investment (ROI) Leverage available skills and resources Automate
Essentialtalk’s Requirements Requirements And challenges
Essentialtalk’s Business Requirements Build a profitable model Fixed, incremental and managed expansion costs Exponential growth capability Simple, intuitive and easy-to-use Fun and interesting environment Easy to change, customize, modify and enhance Easy to maintain (user self-administered) Fully automated Scalable to millions
Essentialtalk’s Implementation Requirements All systems must pass the S-cubed (S3) test: Simple Scalable Secure
Essentialtalk’s Challenges Minimal system requirements Internet access with audio (headphones) Java enabled browser No large downloads Reliable and system redundant Complete automation High security and audio encryption User self-administration and provisioning Flexible foundation for uncertainties
Essentialtalk’s Uncertainties Rapidly evolving hardware and software Variety of “standards” Uncertain operating environment Windows Linux
What Is Certain? People throughout the world have always and will always need to: Communicate ideas Inform others Share information Make decisions If you are human, you communicate with others
We Don’t Know We don’t know (nor should we really care): Where a user is How they are going to access Essentialtalk Or from what browser Or through what operating system Or on what hardware Which network operating system is this flexible?
Leveraging Novell Technologies Leveraging Novell’s Strengths
Infrastructure Before eBusiness It’s always “I” before “E” "…IT professionals need to…simplify internal systems and create externally facing computing infrastructure that satisfies customers, suppliers and partners.” »Jamie Lewis, CEO and Research Director, Burton Group This is exactly what Essentialtalk has achieved by leveraging the strengths of eDirectory and iChain ® with our own proprietary automation applications thereby creating an unparalleled communications system
Novell eDirectory—Strengths Strengths and Features of eDirectory: Removes dependencies to: Operating system (Windows, Linux, OS X) Application software Hardware Access method Location Browser (no client) Replicable, redundant, fail-safe Secure: eDirectory’s rights management becomes the “firewall” to your organization and its data
Novell eDirectory—Strengths (cont.) Strengths and features: Profile Store: All user information All object information Authentication point Identity Manager for ALL content
What Does Novell’s eDirectory Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? We've leveraged all the strengths of eDirectory to the deployment of Essentialtalk’s communication system
What Does Novell’s eDirectory Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) eDirectory features: Instantiate a user Fully automated, self-administered process Simple and easy to use Easy to integrate and federate with other applications Benefit to Essentialtalk: We’ve separated the user administration process from the application The administration of our communication system is thus simple and easy to use, easy to integrate and federate with other applications
What Does Novell’s eDirectory Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) eDirectory features: Rights to access functions based on group membership Benefit to Essentialtalk: Security within the application is controlled by eDirectory, functions available to the user within the application are managed by Essentialtalk We can concentrate our efforts on appropriate and useful Business Processes eDirectory takes care of User Administration and Rights Management eDirectory simplifies!
What Does Novell’s eDirectory Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) eDirectory: “Meetings” become an eDirectory object We instantiate a meeting by simply replicating a “Meeting Object” and then defining attributes and rights of that object
What Does Novell’s eDirectory Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) Benefit to Essentialtalk: We’ve leveraged the secure, replicable, fail-safe directory that has no dependencies to operating environment, other applications, hardware or access method Essentialtalk inherits these attributes and our communication system thus becomes equally secure, replicable, fail-safe and without dependencies on operating environment, other applications, hardware or access method
What Does Novell’s eDirectory Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) eDirectory: Attributes of objects can be other objects
What Does Novell’s eDirectory Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) Benefit to Essentialtalk: Business processes, application behavior, time-lines of meeting events, all meeting activity: these and much more can be defined as “Meeting Attributes” The user rights to access these processes, functions and behaviors are natively controlled by the security of eDirectory and user group membership
What Does Novell’s eDirectory Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) In summary, eDirectory helps make Essentialtalk’s communication systems simple, secure and scalable
Novell iChain—Strengths Strengths and features: Proxy architecture iChain communicates with underlying web servers and applications on behalf of clients visiting our website Multi-homing Provides strength against denial of service attacks while adding to the flexibility of our configuration Authentication using eDirectory iChain doesn’t use agents running on each web server, making configuration and management easy
Novell iChain—Strengths (cont.) Strengths and Features: Browser-based, authentication Simple, single sign-on using Easy to integrate other applications Simple SSL configuration SSL connections are managed from the iChain Proxy server, not each underlying web server; the administration of certificates is thus greatly simplified Pages are cached from Proxy Server Easy to create dynamic content Dynamic content can be passed through http header
What Does Novell’s iChain Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? Benefit to Essentialtalk: Through iChain we’ve implemented a powerful yet easy to administer Privilege Management System that meets our “S-cubed” test: –Simple, scalable and secure iChain simplifies!
What Does Novell’s iChain Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) Benefit to Essentialtalk: iChain with eDirectory isn’t dependent on the underlying hardware configuration; it runs independently and thus transcends the underlying architecture From a design standpoint, it therefore frees EssentialtalkTM to focus on best methods, best solutions; i.e., the solutions that work independent of hardware, operating system, choice of applications or their configuration
What Does Novell’s iChain Do for Essentialtalk’s Solutions? (cont.) Benefit to Essentialtalk: The security is always there; like the air we breathe, iChain does the function it was designed to do, yet is completely transparent Essentialtalk relies heavily on iChain’s capabilities, and because it works so well we often take it for granted
Conclusions iChain frees up the developers of Essentialtalk to focus on their core competencies and ultimately on the solutions that work best Because iChain is “S-cubed,” and because Essentialtalk has leveraged eDirectory and iChain strengths, the powerful Communication Systems developed by Essentialtalk inherit these capabilites: thanks to Novell iChain and eDirectory, Essentialtalk is simple, scalable and secure
Live Demonstration A live demonstration of Essentialtalk’s Communication system