PBA's CMS

Compsoft wins a contract with Reading-based firm to provide a flexible content management system.

As a growing organisation with offices in a number of countries, Peter Brett Associates has an established Marketing Department based in the UK who`s responsibility includes a number of corporate web sites and the content of each.

For some time, the Marketing team had used an internally-written Content Management System, created using classic ASP and SQL Server. "There were a number of issues we needed to address" reflects Leon Swanepoel, PBA`s IT Manager, "the existing system worked to a point, but just didn`t give the flexibility or scalability we needed to support a growing web presence. The demands on our IT resources were growing and it was beginning to be an overhead we could do without. Quite simply, the cost of ownership was just too high, so we investigated replacing the whole thing.

"There were other factors in replacing the system too, we wanted to adopt Microsoft .NET and expand the system to cover a number of corporate sites. The current system only supported our UK site and didn`t extend to the other locations around the globe"

Compsoft`s Head of Software Development, Robin Churcher spearheads the project. "Following the initial meeting, we needed to propose a solution to suit a budget and quickly decided to investigate Open Source. It was a natural choice. What PBA needed wasn`t vastly extraordinary and we were confident that most of the requirements would be supported by something off-the-shelf, and gave us an opportunity to build in the unique requirements.

We investigated a number of open source systems, although this became limited when applying our criteria. We ultimately decided upon Dot Net Nuke, principally as it used .NET Framework 2.0 and was well supported, widely used and had a neat method of adding bespoke modules."

"I made the decision to create a weblog for the entire project, an idea that Leon strongly supported", commented Mark Tillison, Compsoft`s Head of Business Development. "It`s a useful exercise and transparently demonstrates how we undertake a project and the level of interaction we have with a client. Choosing to create a bespoke system is a big decision, and choosing the right company is even bigger. It`s a big trust issue - one I hope the weblog will help new clients to overcome.

The weblog also serves as a useful communication tool on top of the regular project meetings we`ll have with PBA, and a reference point for the future as changes or additions are required."

About Peter Brett Associates

Founded by Peter Brett, in 1965 in Reading to provide structural advice, PBA is now one of the UK`s leading independent consultancy firms offering a range of multi-disciplinary services.

With a total of eleven UK offices, the business has achieved strong organic growth to some 500 staff over the past 40 years, with up the first international offices opening in Berlin in 1989, taking advantage of the reunification of East and West Germany. Office locations now inlcude Australia, Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Romania and South Africa.