Case Studies - Technical Startup Platform - Large-Scale, Distributed Web Application Development

Technical Startup: Social Network Aggregation and Business Contact Management

Product: www.kuhono.com - (SRM) Social Relationship Management System

Kuhono is a cutting-edge, web 2.0 application built on a scalable & distributed platform to support heavy traffic. It uses the latest and most complex of social API's, search algorithms, synchronization frameworks and integration methodologies.
IT Strategy and Design

Task:

• Understand promoter's objectives from business perspective and outline necessary technical requirements, complexities and alternatives to ensure project meets its strategic initiatives.
  
  
• Deliver a technically sound web platform that can efficiently and securely serve tens of thousands of users upon launch, and scale quickly to millions of users when required.
• Ensure a design that allows for easy platform migration and availability on the mobile, desktop and 3rd party platforms like Sales Force.
  
  
• Source a vendor team for project implementation.
• Provide overall execution strategy, schedule and roadmap.
• Ensure delivery on time, on budget and as per schedule.
  
  

Scope of Work

** Please note that the UI design was provided to us by the kuhono promoters as psd files.

Atlogys Contributions:

1. Program Management > Business/Techno Strategy
   • Select all technology and frameworks for a fool-proof and efficient implementation which is attainable within a reasonable time and budget.
     Ruby, Rails (Unicorn), API's (REST), DB (Regis, Mongo), Cloud (EngineYard), 3rd party integrations (HopToad, NewRelic, PingDom)
   • Inform about latest IT trends and best practices in social web 2.0 developments.
   • Identify partnership opportunities and track competition.
   • Discuss Kuhono usage scenarios, target market and launch plan - Suggest new features, validate assumptions.
   • Engineering EYE FOR DETAIL > provide server configuration variables, configure alerts, account for error handling, API rate limiting, and study analytics reports.
2. Software Design and Architecture
   • Provide algorithms, DB schema and data structures for all features (after asymptotic analysis) > Ensure a scalable, maintainable, secure, performance friendly and an easy to use design.
   • Design out-bound REST API's for developers to extract information from Kuhono.
   • Outline rules and usage patterns for external API's like FB, Lin, Twitter, orkut > edge cases, return codes, functional calls, permissions and privacy, irregularities.
   • Design challenges addressed: threading, database sharding, caching, SSL, security (sql Injection, XSS, CSRF, Html Escaping), background parallel processing
3. End-To-End Project and Delivery Management
   • Procure IT team, Guide and Mentor the team > resolve technical deadlocks, assign responsibilities; make contingency plans.
   • Tracking and communication of project health - Decisions, Action items, Change requests, Risks and Issues.
   • Install, Setup and provide access to PM software > dotProject, basecamp, bugzilla.
   • Conduct application tests, QA's, perform latency and load tests, optimize code for server and client side latency.
   • Conduct demos, iterate on feedback, setup meetings, submit reports.
   • Setup and manage the app on the cloud.

Impact

- The whole application was delivered on time and smoothly on the cloud without any hiccups.
- We have two thousand users on beta. We are now making an Iphone and Ipad application for the same.


Technology:
Ruby, Rails
Jquery, Ajax, JavaScript, Css, html
Mongo DB, MySql
REST based API's, Oauth
CLOUD: EngineYard