Adobe Success Story

· Faster time to market
· Experienced programming and cost efficiency
· It's now easier to create co-branded versions of the site
· Scalability—easy to add new features

Project Details

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Before the launch of GlobalSpec.com in 1996, design engineers could spend days thumbing through print catalogs looking for just the right electrical, mechanical or optical parts. Now they need only log on to one Web site to search a database of more than 590,000 searchable parts.

GlobalSpec.com sprang out of the need for a comprehensive database of engineering parts. The search engine site has revolutionized the way suppliers reach engineers, and the way engineers find parts. Based in Troy, New York, GlobalSpec employs 110 people.

Originally CGI based, GlobalSpec.com quickly outgrew that technology. The company needed a more powerful solution to run the Web site. Mark Gaulin, Chief Software Architect at GlobalSpec, said the company decided to switch to Macromedia ColdFusion and JRun technologies because they offered both programming and cost efficiency.

"We're a start-up, and acquisition costs for software and hardware are always an issue," Gaulin said. "We evaluated a few different products, such as Microsoft ASP and higher-end application servers. The coding efficiency was just amazing with ColdFusion, so much so that there really wasn't a lot of comparison for choosing the technology to get the site built. We used ColdFusion for the front end, and then switched off to JRun for the business logic and heavy duty stuff. That worked out really well."

The company began using Macromedia ColdFusion in 1999, and JRUN in 2000. It took about a year and a half to make the switch from straight CGI and C++ programming to the current site, which uses Macromedia ColdFusion and JRun together. The development team included four Web programmers, three Java programmers and one designer.

GlobalSpec.com took paper-based parts catalogs and put them into an electronic database using JRun technology. "The back end is all the catalog management and searching functions. That's what the Java is used for. The Web pages and all the presentation logic use ColdFusion. What you see is ColdFusion, but what you search is JRun," Gaulin explained.

GlobalSpec.com is constantly being improved and updated, and Macromedia ColdFusion and JRun have provided a scalable and flexible infrastructure. "The Web site is pretty complex, and it's gone through a couple of redesigns since we started. Each time, Macromedia technology has made the redesigns as painless as possible," he said.

In addition to offering a free search engine for engineers, GlobalSpec is an effective marketing and advertising tool for parts suppliers. Suppliers can offer GlobalSpec's SpecSearch technology via their own sites, with their own site's look and feel. Macromedia ColdFusion and JRun make it easy to create these co-branded sites.

"We can partner with another Web site and apply their look and feel to our content. It's very simple for us to change the look of the whole site through the use of the ColdFusion front end, and our Java back end," Gaulin said. "We built a very flexible framework for ourselves out of that set of technologies."

GlobalSpec's success is tied directly to the performance of its Web site, and Gaulin credit's Macromedia solutions for helping the company succeed. "We went from a very tiny company to a nice-sized small company. Because we were able to develop our Web site so quickly, our time-to-market with new features was definitely affected in a positive way. We can be very responsive, because the development environment allows us to be, and that keeps us competitive."

The primary benefit is to GlobalSpec.com users, Gaulin added. "What we built, essentially, is a master part catalog for engineers that's fully searchable by specification. Engineers can look in one place and compare prices from almost 1,000 suppliers. That's why we're here."

Site Summary

GlobalSpec, Inc.
350 Jordan Road
Troy, NY 12208

Macromedia Products: JRun 3.0, ColdFusion Server 4.5, Enterprise Edition
Hardware: Compaq servers
Operating System: Windows NT 4 for both ColdFusion and JRun
Database: Microsoft SQL 7.0
Development team: Four Web programmers, three Java programmers and one designer
Registered Users: Over 100,000 registered users
Industry: Internet; content aggregator

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