Working with partner Initsoft and solutions from SpikeSource, AEC delivers new IT intranet and corporate portal service to their customers
American Executive Center Profile
Industries: office space leasing Space under management: 60,000 SF Offices and Suites: 215 Founded: 1985 Location: San Jose, CA URL: www.americanexec.com
Introduction
As the premier provider of professional office space leasing and support services for small businesses and start-ups, American Executive Center (AEC) provides immediate office availability with professional staff that delivers a broad range of services. AEC was founded in 1985 and manages more than 60,000 square feet of prime office space across Silicon Valley. When AEC decided to expand its range of business services, it offered to develop individually customized corporate intranets and portals to its customers. “With our history in Silicon Valley, our customers were turning to us to provide and manage their office facilities and support services,” said Keith Warner, President of AEC. “It made sense that we would also offer to build, design and host their IT intranets and corporate portals.”
Challenges
AEC needed a reliable low-cost web content management solution to support their new business opportunity and considered a range of alternatives from companies such as Vignette, BEA and Microsoft. They also considered a range of solution providers who had the expertise to support them as they delivered portal and intranet solutions to their customers. “When we spoke with our customers, it became clear that they required flexibility at a competitive price with a high level of support and zero downtime,” commented Jeff Warner, Vice President of Marketing.
Solution
AEC chose to partner with InitSoft Web Services, a leader in interactive services. With requirements for flexibility, reliability and low-cost, InitSoft turned to open source content management from SpikeSource. InitSoft developed intranet and portal 'templates' on the Drupal Spike™ Ignited Solution that enabled AEC's customers to 'go live' with production intranets and portals in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. InitSoft Managing Director Salim Lakhani elaborated, “Spike Ignited solutions give us unparalleled flexibility to respond to - and in many cases, anticipate - our customers' customer's needs.”
“The beauty of open source is that it is constantly evolving,” explained Dave Nugent, Initsoft's chief architect. “SpikeSource's support services empower us; because they staff their call centers with the most knowledgeable open source engineers on a 24 x 7 basis, we have access to advanced open source software engineers at all hours of the day. Also, their streaming update service - Spike™ Net - ensures that our customers will always have access to the latest updates, fixes and patches.”
Result
What does this mean to AEC? “Knowing that InitSoft and SpikeSource have teamed to support our customers' issues gives me peace-of-mind,” concluded Keith Warner. “I know that they will have access to the most flexible, cost competitive technical solutions, backed by SpikeSource's industry-leading engineers, support services and update service.”
