Devoteam builds smart cloud solution for ICT broker

Devoteam has a wealth of expertise in new development environments such as .NET and demonstrated that once again with a major ICT broker. To replace three obsolete systems, a new, advanced cloud solution was developed for this customer. On 12 September 2015 release 1.0 was rolled out, comprising a new portal, powerful functionality and the data from the old system. Senior Engineer Elco Bouma of Devoteam was involved in the development and explains the technical choices made.

“The old platform was a website based on Java, JSP and Struts, which was not scalable and could only run one background process. The latter point was an issue, because in time the broker wants to sign up multiple tenants who must also be able to use the platform. That was impossible in the old environment. Therefore, we chose DotNetNuke (DNN) as the CMS. It offers the possibility of hosting and managing multiple domains within a single CMS. It also allows rapid upscaling and expansion – a CMS that was genuinely chosen for growth. That means the load on the website will never cause a problem again.”

Mobile apps

“On the server side all functionality is made available via web services (DNN Webservices Framework), so it can be used not only by a website but also by future mobile apps. These web services have been implemented in such a way as to return results as quickly as possible and to delegate as much work as possible to background processes via an internally produced EventBus. Every instance of DNN has a number of event handlers available. That means the more DNN is expanded or scaled up, the more events can be handled per second until the desired performance is attained.”

AngularJS

“The new portal has three basic functionalities: the management of job applications and offers by the broker itself, the provision of candidates by suppliers and CV searches by recruiters. On the client side we have used Ajax and AngularJS. AngularJS in particular is very hot right now. It is an intelligent technology in which we have a lot of expertise in house and which enables a strong front-end to be built within a short timeframe. That speed is very important now, so we put a lot of emphasis on it at Devoteam. The time to market must be as short as possible for customers. AngularJS contributes to that, as does the Agile/Scrum method that we have used.”

Fast, versatile and flexible

“Mention should also be made of the automated testing as part of the deployment process. Using Selenium, all adjusted functionality of the website is tested entirely automatically on the basis of a regression test set. Overall, it really is a contemporary solution that meets all the current demands made on software: speed, versatility and flexibility. The architecture and implementation of the web services for the basic functionality are complete. Our aim is to issue a new release every two weeks with bug fixes and new functionality.”