Database Technology Trends

TAMPA, Fla., November 10, 2009. Ripley Entertainment contracted with Dobler Consulting in July, 2009 to use his IT Solutions Architect expertise for their new company-wide Intranet portal. They needed an Intranet facelift to match the look, feel, and versatility of their external website, while using existing Microsoft SharePoint® technology.

The major challenge for Peter Dobler was to find a better way to create global collaboration for Ripley’s employees. The company has 74 locations in 13 countries. For the collaboration challenge, Dobler says “Microsoft SharePoint® is an excellent technology, but not attractive or simple for end users to use. It is not a technology that can easily turn a website into a friendly working space.”  Dobler worked with Ripley’s Marketing Department, who created the look and feel of the Intranet design.

The original SharePoint® portal workflows were used infrequently. Dobler added these workflows to the new website design, making certain they were quick to find and utilize. He included menus, reporting, an integrated discussion forum, and attractive screens for employees to collect/share information, and work together on global projects from all locations. The upgraded system enabled employees to raise their work performance exponentially.  Team efficiency and productivity improved rapidly.

The new system architecture provided additional benefits for data protection and security.  Data security challenges were solved through careful planning to ensure no breaches would occur. Dobler used the built-in security capabilities of SharePoint®, and added custom data security measures to protect valuable business data that met Ripley’s standards.

Dobler had eight weeks to update Ripley’s internal site, and implement solutions for their business goals using SharePoint® technology. By the second week of September, Dobler finished the project on-time and within budget. Today, Ripley’s new system uses SharePoint® to its maximum advantage, supports employees collaborating with a wide distribution of data at their fingertips, and maintains data security, aligned with company requirements.

Dobler’s approach to integrating technology with business goals requires “always listening to your clients, and meeting their business expectations. Our goal is to plan, design, build, and implement projects with fast turnaround and no delays.”  Dobler Consulting offers proven experience across many platforms, along with the skills to analyze a customer’s business, offer comprehensive solutions, and bring projects to a successful completion.

More information about how Peter Dobler solves clients’ Intranet challenges by focusing on adding business value, is available at http://www.doblerconsulting.com. He can be reached at 813-322-3240.  

About Ripley Entertainment

Ripley Entertainment (http://www.ripleys.com) is the largest international chain of museum-type tourist attractions in the world. Ripley Entertainment owns, operates, and franchises a variety of attractions, including Great Wolfe Lodge Indoor Water Park Resort in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, world-class aquariums, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museums, Guinness World Records Museums, and Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks.

Ripley Entertainment of Orlando, Florida, owns 74 exciting attractions in 13 countries, best-selling books, a live-action network television series in daily syndication in over 70 countries, and the ninety-year-old, longest continuously published newspaper comic in the world, the classic Believe It or Not! cartoon.

Ripley Entertainment is owned by the Jim Pattison Group. The Jim Pattison Group is headquartered in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and is comprised of over 410 locations worldwide focusing on the automotive, media, packaging, food sales and distribution, magazine distribution, entertainment, export and financial industries.

About Dobler Consulting

Dobler Consulting is a leading information technology and database services company that offers cutting edge technology and integration for their clients. Founded in 2000, the Tampa consulting firm delivers implementation expertise for Oracle, Sybase, and MS SQL Server. Dobler Consulting has over 20 years of proven experience, working with their clients to improve database efficiencies and reduce costs. Dobler Consulting serves local and southeast regional clients with their world class services and products.

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Turns out that maintaining a blog requires time and efforts. That’s why so many blogs went silent in the past few months. Regarding a source of the NY Times (Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest) bloggers are abandoning their beloved blogs in an increasing rate. The good news is that this will weed out 95% of all the competitors.

I have to admit that I fell into a blog fatigue myself. After blogging a few articles that created a lot of interest in the market space I got wrapped up in a lot of work for my company and ignored my blog all together.

Many of my fellow colleagues were constantly asking me when I will release my next article on the blog. I chose to ignore these requests and deemed the blog as too much work for not much in return. But times are changing and the current recession is very challenging for small businesses to stay afloat.

The one thing the last recession proofed was that the companies that were able to keep their names on people’s minds, either through advertising or aggressive mouth to mouth promotions, came out ahead once the economy recovered.

Of course advertising costs money and money is tight during a recession. But there’s a way to bypass that. Blogging is essentially free and a great tool to keep your name in people’s mind. Especially in the consulting business it is very hard to actually create a direct response marketing campaign. Circulating your name is the best method to keep you on a possible short list in the future.

So, this is reason enough for me to re-launch my blog. There will be summaries and reviews of new database features recently released by the major database vendors. I will also add a new topic covering content management issues. Besides a multi decade long experience in database architecture and management I also added Microsoft’s SharePoint as a strategic tool to my company and the blog will feature articles that will discuss SharePoint features not many people are aware of.  Whenever possible there will be real life experiences as well.

Having said that I now have to go back to the drawing board and get busy with the next blog series.

As always, thank you for stopping by and your continued interest in my views.
Thanks,
Peter