Caché VAR builds Web portal for one of UK's biggest TV companies

Key Benefits

• The Web
• Rapid application development
• Performance
• Scalability

Television shows take on lives of their own, and the people who watch them get so enthralled in the characters that they crave more than just the hour or so the programs are aired each week. World Productions, one of the biggest TV production companies in the UK, producing programs such as Attachments, Ballykissangel, The Cops, and a host of other programs on behalf of the BBC and Channel 4, realized that a Web presence would help attract and retain viewers of its programming. So World Productions turned to Caché VAR, Pronoia Production Ltd., to build an Internet portal (www.world-productions.com) that would give viewers an inside look at their favorite programs.

Pronoia specializes in integrating systems for the Internet, building customized solutions that deliver real value and provide powerful user experience through the combination of creative and technical expertise. The company provides Web and application hosting and e-business services and support.

"We have been using InterSystems technology for some time," said George Sirius, managing director of Pronoia Productions Ltd. "It has been our main platform of choice. We deal with customers that have large, complex back-end systems and need a robust and scalable DBMS on which to develop and deploy their applications. Caché is ideally suited to this environment."

For World Productions, Pronoia used Caché to develop an Internet portal comprising information on the latest shows, production teams, the process of developing a program from script to screen, as well as data on the company, its shows, and how it produces programs.

Additionally, World productions needed a sophisticated content management tool (CMT) for the site that would enable them to update information and add new sections without the need of any programming knowledge.

Pronoia's advanced CMT allows the editors of World Productions to add new content such as episodes, series, and interviews with minimal effort by using an easy-to-use interface. Furthermore, since the system is Web-based, changes can even be made remotely. The Pronoia site is deployed on Caché Server Pages and Dreamweaver.

Apart from the content management tool, there are a number of sub-systems that Pronoia built to support the portal, such as an advanced e-mail sub-system that handles automatic creation and distribution of e-newsletters and e-mail campaigns, a community sub-system that controls interactive content such as forums, chat-rooms, and quizzes, and an administration sub-system that handles subscriptions and various user information. Pronoia used Caché technology to build all the above systems.

"World Productions chose Pronoia because we are able to build systems that can change at least as fast as the organizations they support," said George Sirius, managing director of Pronoia. "We can only do this by using Caché because it is the only technology that allows us to develop such adaptive Web systems."

InterSystems' flagship product, Caché, is a post-relational database with a multidimensional data and application server offering ultra-fast and massively scalable objects and SQL. Caché features breakthrough rapid development technology for building objects and object applications.

Based in London, Pronoia is a fast-growing IT company specializing in the provision of Internet solutions. The primary focus is on developing back-end systems, applications, and integrating systems for the Web. Pronoia has developed multimedia and Web applications, presentations, and training courses for a number of clients including Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, NCR, Viacom, and others. Additionally, Pronoia has developed and incorporated expertise from the client-server application development arena with experience in the industrial, financial, insurance, tour operator, healthcare, housing, and public sectors.