KiKUZE®, THE REGION'S FIRST PRINT MANAGEMENT ASP PORTAL DEMONSTRATES SUN'S SERVICE DRIVEN NETWORK VISION.

"Sun's vision of a service-driven network allowed us to develop KiKUZE Print Manager[tm], the region's first Print Management ASP Portal." Mr. Winson Lan, CEO of A&P. "Open-based technologies such as JAVA[tm] and XML made it possible for us to deliver a "thin-client" architecture with "thick" functionality that is crucial in a ASP model."

HIGHLIGHTS

Company:

• A&P Co-ordinator Pte Ltd

Industry:

• Graphic Art, Digital Visual Content and Print Industry.

Key Business Issues / Challenges:

• To create and deliver a world-class solution for print procurement and management based on an ASP model.
• To harness the power of the Internet and its enabling technologies to create leading edge best of breed solutions for the print and graphic art industry.
• To develop cutting edge solutions which poses a high barrier to prevent "copy and imitate", in the highly competitive ASP industry.
• Solutions developed must be able to scale upwards to cater for large number of users on the Internet, yet at the same time be able to scale to fit an organization's intranet infrastructure.

Business Results:

• A highly interactive thin-client application on the Internet, KiKUZE Print Manager[tm], which enables companies to manage printed and digital assets, as well as on-line print procurement based on Sun technologies.
• Earlier than expected time to market, faster development and deployment which in return results in huge savings in development costs and upfront hardware investments.
• Faster deployment time means the Company is one of the early players in the print e-procurement industry.
• Company repositioned and established itself as a vertical ASP.

Configuration:

• Sun Solaris[tm] Operating Environment,
• J2EE technologies and platform
• Oracle 8i database on Sun Enterprise[tm] 250
• Sun Enterprise[tm] E450 application server
• iPlanet 4.0

A&P Co-ordinator Pte Ltd is a leading Graphic & Print Specialist that developed KiKUZE Print Manager[tm], an Internet-based application for the on-line procurement of print materials and management of printed and digital assets. As a iLIUP developer-partner of Sun Microsystems, A&P developed and deployed its services based on Sun technologies and platform via the ASP (Application Service Provider) Model.

About A&P Co-ordinator Pte Ltd
Established in 1989, A&P Co-ordinator Pte Ltd is a leading Graphic & Print Specialist with years of experience and research & development in the field of graphic management, colour science, colour print control and colour-calibration.

A&P Co-ordinator is also involved in the exciting and dynamic Digital Visual Content (DVC) market where it has been developing and marketing DVC products both in Singapore and Japan. Together with its associate company in Japan ‹ DesignEXchange Co. Ltd, it has become a market leader in Japan with 34% market share in the graphic art and digital visual content industry. The company licenses A&P's graphic art and digital visual content to major inkjet and laser jet printer manufacturers and software publishers.

Its print customers include all the top advertising and design agencies, such as Saatchi & Saatchi and the WPP Group, including Ogilvy & Mather.

Propelling the Company into the Future
Throughout the company's 13 years of history in the printing business, the company observed the common problems that surrounded the entire print procurement cycle which are still accepted as an industry norm and saw a market opportunity.

Mr. Winson Lan, CEO of A&P identified problems with the existing print procurement process and decided to create and deliver a world-class solution for print procurement and management.

A market survey was conducted and the company found the following:

• Inefficient, highly paper-based and time-consuming print procurement process.
• No central archiving of digital assets as all transparencies (photographs), design artwork and printing films are being kept with respective advertising agencies or print vendors.

With these findings, A&P needed to meet the the following challenges:

• Develop a system that solves the above problems and facilitates the print procurement process by ensuring easy integration with existing company processes.
• Develop a web-based application service based on a subscription model that is easily available, eliminating the need for unnecessary hardware investment
• Need for a scalable and highly reliable environment to support high usage and transactions quickly and efficiently.
• Ensure simplicity and user experience with minimum training and support.
• Deploy a powerful server to handle huge graphic files generation, archive and retrieval, dynamic HTML and business logic.

A&P Chose Sun Technologies as the basis of its Services
A&P embarked on a project to create and deliver a world-class solution for print procurement and management based on an ASP model. It wanted an application that is platform independent and scalable. One of the crucial success factor was to have an application that is 100% Java[tm] and XML based that allows users to perform transaction and collaborate with multiple parties within a single workspace.

Other concerns include the need to develop cutting-edge solutions which poses a high barrier that prevents "copy and imitate" in the highly competitive ASP industry. It required the solution to be able to scale upwards to cater for large number of users on the Internet, yet at the same time be able to scale to fit an organization's intranet infrastructure.

A joint development effort was initiated with KRDL's spin-off Nexusedge Technologies Pte Ltd that developed Facado[tm]‹ an innovative "service-on-demand" engine for delivering interactive and collaborative e-services over the Internet from companies who seek to bring business critical services onto the Internet platform.

The Sun Solaris Operating Environment was selected as the deployment platform for its open and scalable computing platform with the J2EE platform used to develop business logic, transaction workflow and messaging applications, essential to the Print Management solution.

Oracle 8i on Sun Enterprise[tm] 250 servers was used to develop the database module while Sun Enterprise 450 server was used as the application server as A&P needed a powerful server with scalable memory to handle the large number of users expected to run the application. Other applications used were iPlanet 4.0 and weblogic 5.1 solutions.

A&P Launches KiKUZE Print Manager[tm], the Region's First Print Manager Portal
A&P's developmental efforts resulted in KiKUZE Print Manager[tm], Singapore's first Print Management Portal offering ASP services to all the government bodies, statutory boards and corporate companies, including its existing clients such as advertising and design agencies.

"Sun's vision of a service-driven network allowed us to develop KiKUZE Print Manager[tm], the region's First Print Management ASP Portal." Mr. Winson Lan, CEO of A&P. "Open-based technologies such as JAVA[tm] and XML made it possible for us to deliver a "thin-client" architecture with "thick" functionality that is crucial in a ASP model."

The result is a web-based print procurement system that gives the print buyer control over its digital assets and print vendors as well as facilitating faster processes in shorter time frames with less human intervention.

From Application to a Service Driven Approach
With A&P's decision to adopt an ASP model in providing a unique print procurement and management service, it was able to use open-standards-based technologies such as JAVA and XML to create value-added services over the Internet. The company had successful transformed a stand alone application concept into a service-based utility.

By choosing Sun technologies as the development and deployment platform, the benefits were earlier than expected time-to-market, faster development and deployment. These resulted in huge savings in development costs and upfront hardware investments. Faster deployment time also meant that A&P is one of the early players in the print e-procurement industry.

Today, A&P, through KiKUZE Print Manager[tm] has successful repositioned and established itself as a vertical ASP, offering the following services:

• Print Procurement Management: Efficient procurement management that aims to eliminate time-consuming paper-based and people intensive process of approvals, requisition, purchase order to delivery thereby streamlining and standardizing print process.
• Information and File Management: Centralized archiving and retrieval of digital assets ensure that all digital assets are kept within the client's organization by systematic and automated archival of digital files for easy access and retrieval.
• Interactive Collaboration: Collaboration tools allow real time collaboration between multiple parties where they are able to view multiple graphic and text files within a single workspace for easy comparison and confirmation.
• Activities Management: Reporting metrics that allows the generation of user activities report, individual spent report down to order status report bringing visibility and accountability throughout the whole organization.

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