LTech and The College of Southern Idaho

Company Overview
LTech is a leading cloud technology integrator and search solutions provider established in 2001. As an early Google Enterprise Partner, LTech has successfully completed dozens of Google Apps deployments and Google Search Appliance configurations.

The College of Southern Idaho, established in 1965, is a public 2-year community college located in Twin Falls, Idaho. The school has approximately 7,000 undergraduate students, and offers associate and technical certificates in over 115 subjects.

Challenge
The College of Southern Idaho needed a way to improve communication between all students and staff on campus. Tired of expensive software licenses and limited storage space, they decided to switch their email system to Google Apps Education Edition for its superior webmail interface, integrated chat and calendar, and document sharing capabilities. CSI also wanted students to have more flexibility when logging in to their system. They came to LTech with a concept that would let students choose their login name from a list of options.

Solution

After deploying Google Apps, LTech worked with CSI to determine a custom Single Sign-On solution that would meet their needs. Within two weeks, LTech developed and implemented an on-demand provisioning system that would sample each student's name and generate a list of name combinations. When a student provisions their email for the first time, they can log in with their student ID number and then choose an email address from the list of identity options.

Results

By moving to Google Apps, CSI could provide their students with increased storage space and better collaboration tools. Since Google offers free server storage and maintenance to colleges, they were able to free up time and resources to focus on other computing objectives. LTech's Single Sign-On customization work was completed just in time for the CSI summer '09 semester.

"LTech was able to provide us development expertise that we enjoyed working with. We were able to brainstorm well with them, good give and take, with solid professional recommendations from them." - Jay Sneddon, Data Services Director

LTech and BodyBuilding.com

Company Overview
LTech is a leading cloud technology integrator and search solutions provider established in 2001. As an early Google Enterprise Partner, LTech has successfully completed dozens of Google Apps deployments and Google Search Appliance configurations.

BodyBuilding.com is a Sports Nutrition E-Retailer and Online Fitness Community. The site, which has been ranked as the most visited body building site in the world, motivates people to reach their fitness goals with informational resources, forums, editorial content, and a cyberstore of high-quality sports nutrition products.

Challenge

BodyBuilding.com was using a Google Mini to crawl and index their site and provide customers with the best possible search. As the site gained popularity, the content began to expand, drawing it closer to the document limit. After adding a new BodySpace site area for visitors to track their fitness progress, the Google Mini was no longer able to handle the amount of documents on the site. BodyBuilding.com upgraded to a standard GB-1001, but needed help replicating their current search structure.

Solution

After the upgrade, LTech configured the Google Search Appliance for BodyBuilding.com based on their specific requirements. The appliance was set up to crawl and index all of their documents, reproducing their previous site search. LTech added built-in KeyMatches to promote certain pages and created collections to let users search separate parts of the index. The search and results pages were customized to match the look and feel of BodyBuilding.com.

Results

As one of the top health and fitness websites with hundreds of products and a wealth of content, BodyBuilding.com wanted to provide their visitors with highly-refined search capabilities. With search powered by Google and LTech, BodyBuilding.com users are receiving fast, accurate results with the ability to query the entire site, or limit their search to stores, product reviews, blogs, groups and more.

LTech and Huffington Post

Company Overview

LTech is a leading cloud technology integrator and search solutions provider established in 2001. As an early Google Enterprise Partner, LTech has successfully completed dozens of Google Apps deployments and Google Search Appliance configurations.

The Huffington Post is a popular online news site and weblog featuring daily columns, news commentary, and public opinons. The site was launched in 2005 and has over 45 million readers today.

Challenges

After a detailed analysis of the available options for a corporate email solution, Huffington Post decided to move their entire corporate user base from Noteworthy to Google Apps Premium Edition, a more suitable service for their needs. 

During their attempt to perform an in-house migration to Google Apps, the IT team experienced several obstacles that impeded the process. They also found there was a strong need to support executives' mobile devices with the new solution. They reached out to LTech for its expertise in Google Apps set up, configuration, and migration.

Solution

With the specialized knowledge and expertise in Google Apps solutions, LTech completed the Google Premium Apps set up (50 users), personalization, and migration from Noteworthy solution.

To accomplish this a test mailbox was initially set up to run a proof test. The strategy behind this was to collect all usernames, schedule a migration time, change all passwords on the dovecot server to a single item, run tests for pop users, run the bulk IMAP migration and change over the DNS. 

For executives, LTech also helped The Huffington Post leverage Google Sync for Blackberry. Part of this process required assisting in the change management aspects associated with a different way of collaborating on mobile devices using IMAP for email via Blackberry Internet Services and Google Sync for Blackberry for contacts and calendar.

Results

LTech successfully completed the migration in less than four days, providing The Huffington Post with a robust and cost effective email solution. The client was extremely pleased with LTech's work, as well as Google Apps Premium Edition.  

“You guys did a super job for us. LTech's people are creative, bright, knowledgeable and extremely helpful. They are a delight to work with. I would recommend you to anyone looking for a Google Technology partner.”-  Paul Berry, Chief Technology Officer, Huffington Post.

LTech and WildBlue Communications

Company Overview
LTech Consulting has been solving problems for both large enterprises and startup companies since 2001. Our team of dedicated search, collaboration, and web engineers empower businesses with innovative technologies such as Google Apps and the Google Search Appliance. WildBlue Communications is a satellite Internet Service Provider with more than 250,000 customers. Started in 2005 and based in Colorado, WildBlue offers satellite broadband Internet services to homes and businesses across the United States.

Challenges
After a detailed analysis of available email options including single-sign on and provisioning, WildBlue decided to move their entire customer base from their current provider to Google Apps Partner Edition. This would allow them to see significant cost savings and provide their users with the power of Google Apps. WildBlue knew from the onset that they would need an experienced partner to set up the Google Apps configuration, handle provisioning and single sign on, as well as the critical migration of e-mails and contacts for all of their customers.

Solution LTech remotely completed this Google Apps custom set up, including Google Gadget creation, and many other custom "bells and whistles" to make Google Apps fit all of WildBlue's custom needs. LTech's SyncSuite Hosted Edition was chosen for the project. Project highlights include:

• Design and implementation of a High-Availability Customer Directory to support operations, Customer Care, Client Account Management and Google Apps Authentication.Full support for separation and aggregation of core business and wholesale customers - including "skin-able" interfaces and logical customer account management.
• Design and creation of a browser based Customer Management portal allowing customers to provision their own accounts, update and view account information.Design and creation of a browser based Customer Care portal providing core business and wholesale care agents with a robust account management interface.Creation of an XML interface to allow peripheral resources to provision and update core business and wholesale accounts as well as synchronize Google Apps account information.Design, implementation and maintenance of a HA Load Balanced Managed Hosting Platform for both Production and DR Environments.

Results

• WildBlue saves more than $250,000 each month with the new solution. The solution is 100% managed by LTech in its datacenter, allowing WildBlue to focus on their core business and improving customer experience.
• Working together through the transition period of moving 300,000 people from one email system to another, LTech has built a lasting relationship with WildBlue.

Members of the WildBlue IT staff had this to say about one of our project leaders:

"We thought that this would be a good time to let you know how much we enjoy working with you and appreciate you...You are a true professional and it's a pleasure to work with someone of your caliber. We have both been in QA for several years and we really appreciate working with a developer / PM that responds to issues so quickly and communicates with QA Engineers so well...You are doing such a great job"

LTech and Gallaudet University

Company Overview
LTech Consulting has been solving problems for both large enterprises and startup companies since 2001. Our team of dedicated search, collaboration, and web engineers empower businesses with innovative technologies such as Google Apps and the Google Search Appliance. Gallaudet University is the first U.S. college for the education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Established by a philanthropist in 1856 and located in Washington, D.C., Gallaudet is the only university in the United States in which all programs are designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

Challenges
Gallaudet wanted to upgrade their email system from OutBlaze to a more user-friendly system such as Google Apps. Their main goal was to free their users from the volume of spam they were receiving. They turned to LTech for assistance with migrating their email boxes, single-sign-on, and provisioning.

Solution
LTech provisioned SyncSuite for Google Apps into the Gallaudet environment and built a custom capture application to obtain addresses and passwords.

Results
Gallaudet University received a robust email solution that fit their needs and saved them time and budget. The custom capture application allowed users to perform the email migration at their own pace, with a goal of all users migrated before Fall semester 2008.

"I really appreciate you working with us on this. You've been great!" -- Jon, Director of Information Technology Services

LTech and Red Dog Informatics

Company Overview
LTech Consulting has been solving problems for both large enterprises and startup companies since 2001. Our team of dedicated search, collaboration, and web engineers empower businesses with innovative technologies such as Google Apps and the Google Search Appliances.Red Dog Informatics is a global internet and information technology company and part of The Wyanoke Group. Red Dog specializes in medical education and publishing and has a variety of services including web design and maintenance, database development, and other IT solutions.

Challenge
Red Dog Informatics was rolling out a new site for Endocrinetoday.com, published by SLACK Incorporated, a sister company in The Wyanoke Group. Red Dog required improved search functionality that would deliver relevant results, support metadata drilldown, and integrate with their site design.

Solution
LTech's QuickStart for Google Search Appliance allowed Red Dog to build out a successful search system. LTech customized the included parametric search capabilities in Version 5 of the Google Search Appliance to support a more sophisticated hierarchical drill-down. In addition, LTech consulted with Red Dog on best-practices for structuring their web content for crawling and outputting of results.

Results
Endocrinetoday.com is now powered by the Google Search Appliance. Users enjoy sophisticated drill-down search functionality along with the simple power of relevant and speedy search. This solution is slated to be rolled out to more publication web sites in the future.

"I do have to say that we have been very pleased with how LTech has worked with us on this important project." -- Marc, Senior Network Advisor