Author Solutions Developer Finds the “Write Way” to Success in the Cloud with Force.com

In today’s challenging economic climate, many companies are scaling back and limiting new IT investments, leaving developers stuck in maintenance mode. This is not the case for Paul Rodibaugh. His employer, Author Solutions, Inc. (ASI) is bucking the trend. ASI owns several of the foremost self-publishing brands—AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, Xlibris, and WordClay—and also “white label” do-it-yourself publishing and associated services. Rather than cutting back, ASI’s developers are hard at work building new cloud computing applications that will reduce costs and give ASI a competitive advantage.

Rodibaugh is ASI’s senior applications developer. He studied computer science at Purdue University, and has more than six years of developing experience with .NET, PHP, and Flash; initially on projects for a marketing agency and later for ASI. The company recently decided to leverage the Force.com platform to consolidate disparate systems and automate processes, and build an end-to-end publishing platform. This was Rodibaugh’s first cloud-computing assignment and first exposure to Force.com. Now he sees them as the future of computing.

Moving to the Cloud

Rodibaugh and the ASI IT department first encountered salesforce.com when they implemented CRM for iUniverse. ASI quickly saw the potential to support additional processes, but credit Kevin Weiss, ASI chief executive officer, with instituting the charge to move all of the publisher’s operations to the cloud.

Weiss, a software industry veteran with nearly three decades of experience in leadership roles at IBM, as well as tenures as president of McAfee and CEO of SimDesk—a pioneer of cloud computing, appreciated the benefits and was determined to build the company’s new platform in the cloud. Rodibaugh’s team was assigned to deliver on Weiss’ vision. Impressed by salesforce.com’s investment in the Force.com platform, ASI’s IT team chose to use it.

Rodibaugh was charged with creating an enterprise-grade application built on Force.com that would manage the entire publishing process for iUniverse, one of the company’s core brands, from manuscript handoff to design and production, cataloging, sales, and marketing. Integration with legacy financial systems was critical.

Rodibaugh rolled up his sleeves and enrolled in a Force.com training and certification class for developers; one week later, he’d gained enough knowledge to start coding. Working side-by-side with salesforce.com partner Appirio, he began capturing business requirements and sketching out the solution. In less than five months, Rodibaugh and his team delivered an application that automates the entire publishing process and integrates the company’s legacy systems.

“Within Force.com, we’ve implemented a workflow engine as a way for production staff to keep track of all of their work, including book and service orders,” Rodibaugh said.  “We’ve implemented a way to track publishing packages, add-on services, and the entire book production process. We’ve included a way to track royalties with a revenue recognition model. Everything that surrounds our business is tied in some way back to the application built on Force.com.”

Rodibaugh adds, “We have an extensive Force.com Web services layer that is written in Apex code. That service feeds our BizTalk application that drives the iUniverse Web site (www.iuniverse.com) and e-commerce engine, the supporting system that moves files and drives the freelancing and outsourcing that we do. Changes that are made on the floor or by authors on the Web site are instantly and automatically reflected in our online store.”

In short, all sales, marketing, production, publishing services, and author support for ASI’s’ iUniverse brand now run in the cloud.

It’s Different Up Here

Rodibaugh was quick to realize the benefits of working with Force.com. Customization, integration, and implementation all are faster and easier with Force.com, and enable developers to quickly translate their efforts into bottom-line successes. 

With Force.com, ASI doesn’t need to invest in hardware and software to support its publishing brands, or in the manpower needed to maintain them.  “I don’t have to worry about server setup or Web site setup,” Rodibaugh said. “With Force.com, I can focus on delivering value to our business and providing new processes that have an immediate impact on the bottom line. When I worked with .NET, I had to spend a lot of time worrying about the server setup before I could even think about delivering value.”

Another key benefit of Force.com is the ease with which it can be customized and integrated with other systems and solutions. According to Rodibaugh, “Often I can quickly accomplish what I need to do either through the declarative parts of the builder environment, or with very little Apex code. Whereas with .NET, it would automatically be a coding solution.

ASI is based in Bloomington, Indiana, so Rodibaugh hasn’t had the benefit of a large, local peer group using Force.com. However, he was able to go to the recent Dreamforce conference, where he attended training classes and shared ideas with other developers. Rodibaugh has also gotten a lot of help from the online community.

“There are good release notes available,” Rodibaugh said. “When I have a problem, I’ll post something on the Developerforce discussion boards, and I can usually find a solution pretty quickly.”

More Clouds in the Forecast

 Rodibaugh’s platform has been extremely successful for iUniverse, and ASI has already begun adding additional brands—including Xlibris and AuthorHouse—to the Force.com-driven platform. Weiss and the ASI executive team are so pleased that they are considering replacing their current white-label product with the Force.com platform, for easier updates and integrations and access to the third-party solutions available on the AppExchange.

Rodibaugh is excited about continuing to develop with Force.com. “It’s pretty amazing when you look at the opportunities out there, at what businesses need today to be scalable, cut costs, act quickly. I see a great future in terms of cloud computing in general, and Force.com can be considered the leader of cloud platforms. It’s a nice place to be.”

Rodibaugh encourages other developers to check out Force.com. “The first thing they need to understand is that it isn’t CRM anymore. It is much, much more than that. If they go to the Developerforce Web site, it is easy to see. At the Web site, they can sign up for a developer edition account, see release notes, and access information that can speed the transition to the cloud. Next, I would encourage them to implement something in Force.com that they’ve done before with another platform. It doesn’t have to be a big project. Implementing even a simple Web site demonstrates the power and ease of getting started on the platform.”

How do I get started?

The best way to get started is to sign up for the Force.com Free Edition.