Web Services with a difference

Staying ahead of the game

Much has changed with typesetting services providers over the years - the ever increasing use of Desk Top Publishing, and publishing companies outsourcing their typesetting to overseas locations, to name just two. These changes have also affected Letterpart, a Reigate based typesetting services business, but not in the way that has negatively affected many other similar companies.

The positive difference for Letterpart is due in no uncertain terms to the technical awareness of its Managing Director, Chris Leggett. "Looking back over the past 15 years," Chris comments, "our business has never been busier, never been better positioned technically, and never been in such a good position to take advantage of the constantly changing markets. This keeps Letterpart at the fore-front of providing quality services to our continually growing customer list."

Letterpart's ability to continually adapt and provide an ever increasing range of professional services to its customers has been at the heart of its ongoing success. As mentioned previously, this is in part due to the way that Letterpart has used the various changes in technology over the years.

Chris Leggett again, "Our customers, particularly those that are Legal Publishers, are constantly facing shorter turnaround times. They have a need to publish information as quickly as possible, sometimes within 24 hours from content creation to final print product. Blending tried and tested business processes with the latest technology allows us to continually meet our customers' ever tightening deadlines."

Technology, a step in the right direction

Technology has always been at the centre of Letterpart's delivery services. Based on XyEnterprise's XML Professional Publisher (XPP) typesetting and composition software, Letterpart has, over the years, built up an array of automatic processes to meet a wide variety of customer needs.

XPP's ability to automatically process Markup Languages such as eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which stretches back to the early 90s, is another reason why Letterpart has been able to build up such a formidable typesetting service.

By combining a detailed knowledge of customer data and the automatic data processing/composition tools within XPP, Letterpart is able in many cases to produce final page proofs in a matter of seconds from their in-house laser printers - that is not to say that you cannot correct errors, as XPP has the usual full page editing window for corrections if needed. "It's a very long way from the Camera Ready Copy (CRC) times of years ago," comments Chris.

A convergence of change

The last five years has seen a number of changes. These include the maturing of communication connections, first with ISDN and now with the availability of high-speed dedicated Leased-Lines, technical improvements in XPP, publishers acquiring Content Management Systems (CMSs) and the rapid adoption by publishers of XML data standards (alongside their existing Word/Rich Text Format (RTF) workflows) for their Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) content creators. Plus the publishers' need to deliver more and more time-critical information to their customers over electronic portals as fast as possible.

In order to accommodate these and other changes, Letterpart has had to continuously reassess how it can broaden its services whilst still satisfying existing clients.

Outsourcing, but not as we know it!

With the rise in the provision of outsourcing services from outside of the UK during the last few years, one might be forgiven for thinking that Letterpart would find it hard to compete. Far from succumbing to this challenge, Letterpart has again adapted its production processes to provide many of its customers with its own form of outsourcing. This not only delivers faster finished pages, but also puts much of the composition production control into the hands of the publisher themselves. Interestingly, Letterpart counts a number of overseas customers amongst its clients, adding another twist to the notion that all outsourcing comes from abroad.

Web Services and latterly Software as a Service have both been described as methods of providing end users with access to professional production tools, without the need to own and of course maintain them. Letterpart's approach of using enhanced production services employs very much the same methodology.

In simple terms this means that an SME, from their publishing house, can send an XML file via an Internet connection to Letterpart's XPP Web Services server, have it composed into pages almost immediately against predetermined style guidelines, and receive back to their desktop PC browser a PDF for review. If editorial amendments are necessary, this process can be repeated until final approval of the file by the SME.

Because the quality of the PDF can be predetermined, the SMEs workflow can eventually print out the PDF for replication within the publishers' own environment or for uploading to the publishers' own web site/portal. In addition to the straightforward Web Services offered, Letterpart also provides a way for publishers to take advantage of this new technology even when they may still operate an internal workflow based on traditional Word/RTF data. Chris comments,

This shows the XPP and Web Services production workflow that is most commonly used

“We still find that many publishers remain locked intonon-XML data flows and using our Web Services we have the ability to process their traditional Word/RTF data, converting it into
XML for our processing purposes and
subsequent PDF production, but can also return their ‘enhanced’ Word/RTF data for use in their own internal SME editorial environment”.

The magic is in the details

Launching its first Web Services production process in late 2003, Letterpart has recently completely revamped its production processes with upgrades to both its hardware configuration and a new version of its Web Services production software.

Initially, Web Services was run on what was considered at the time to be a pretty powerful hardware platform. Over the ensuing years, this has worked very well, but to meet increasing client demand for the new services, the hardware platform has also been upgraded.

The new hardware platform is built around three powerful Dell servers running the latest dual-core Intel^® Xeon^™ processors combined with a Storage Area Network (SAN) providing some 3 Terabytes of data space. The system is protected via a large Robotic Tape Library used to back-up and archive the data. Letterpart's new Web Services also incorporates a number of the emerging Web 2.0 tools as well as using Ajax for much of its Web application interactivity.

To ensure continuity of production for its customers, Letterpart has implemented improved fallback systems, comprising of an in-house secondary production system and a full off-site production facility, both systems being fully available when required. "When revamping our production environment, we decided to increase our Disaster Recovery abilities to ensure that our current and new customers can continue with Web Services production, irrespective of events outside of their control. Something that in today's time-critical production environment is absolutely essential."

		In addition to features described above, the new version of Letterpart’s Web Services will offer many new features aimed at widening its adoption by both existing, and new, Letterpart customers. This includes being able to process multiple files at the same time and an increased size capacity for individual files. Also, new levels of syntax checking will be available for use by clients before the files are sent for processing. The quality of the User Interface has been revamped, introducing, for example,
Hardware configurations (left - main production, right - disaster recovery system)		the ability of users to drag and drop their files into any order in which they require them to be processed, even to the point of producing a whole publication automatically.

Letterpart, ever conscious of security concerns, will also offer publishers the ability to keep their XML Control Files on their own editorial systems, offering a high level of secure control over all aspects of their customers' production needs.

Other elements of the new Letterpart Web Services will allow for automatic feedback messages to be sent to customer editorial staff indicating that there is a need for them to check elements of the Web Services production process. Similar messages will also be sent via email and text messaging to Letterpart production staff to alert them to issues that may need to be resolved.
	The new Letterpart Web Services client User Interface

It's about listening to the customers!

We have spent quite a bit of time planning this upgrade to our Web Services production," comments Chris, "and most of what we have changed has been as the result of discussions and feedback from many of our customers. Of course we've added a number of our own new features that will enhance the service and make it even more productive for both ourselves and our customers to use."

Staying ahead of the game by combining the benefits of the latest technology with good business practices will ensure that Letterpart continues to lead the way in this price-conscious and time-critical publishing market place.