News 2003

December
One of our consulting teams advised an international company on management concerns. In cooperation with a client team from five different countries, we identified not only strategic options for the improvement of the global business processes, but also devised a sizable catalogue of tangible individual steps. This enabled the customer to take immediate action to realize fast and practical savings.
We developed a new groupware application, based on a collaboration API. To live up to the expectations of the customer, we made heavy use of the advanced customizing features of the groupware. Additionally, we analyzed the authentication module and the encrypted cookies.
Against the macro economic tide, TNG continued to grow quickly. All three service divisions - administration, development and IT management - were actively expanded. Consequently, the company had 21 full-time employees at the turn of the year. For this we'd like to cordially thank all our customers and employees.

November
We prepared a financial institutions's archiving solution for an internal audit. For this purpose, we analyzed and documented all the archiving processes, looking for weak points.
We participated in the strategic server and systems consolidation of a multinational company. A crucial step was the detailed roadmap for the migration of proprietary solutions onto the new corporate platform. The target platform is based upon multiple IBM WebSphere application servers arranged into a high-availability cluster with a capacity for more than 100 different applications and more than 100.000 named users. The roadmap contained both technical aspects as well as cost and time estimations.
In order to consolidate the storage of several peripheral European production and administration facilities belonging to one of our clients, we planned and were chiefly responsible for the migration of the old systems onto the new storage fabric.

October
As part of a code review, one of our Java experts analyzed a third-party application. We were able to show that the application was not multithread-safe when heavily loaded; in case of an exception, not just the one transaction, but all the open transactions would be rolled back. Due to this analysis, the going-live date of the application was delayed for several tens of thousands of end users until the problems were fixed.
We accepted new Unix Cluster work in a test environment.
We reviewed a complex archiving system consisting of 6 Solaris servers, on which about 25 applications and projects totalling 7 TB of data were held in DVD robots.
We extended a MapX-based GIS application to support the required UMTS functionalities.
The first workshops for a new international process optimization task were held, receiving positive feedback from the concerned countries.
We optimized a location based services-application, resulting in faster response times and greatly increased scalability for users.
We improved a script that controls the routing of the backup data traffic of over 400 productive servers. The script, which was initially intended to be a temporary workaround, was sophisticated enough to be used in the day to day operations on 4 different Unix flavours. The whole network environment dedicated to the backup could be reconfigured on-the-fly without any reboots.
Even though the macroeconomic conditions were tough, TNG hired several new IT specialists. We plan to continue this policy of careful and sustainable growth.

September
Based on SAN/NAS concepts, we developed an IT strategy for certain tasks within a multinational company. The amount of data to be considered was extraordinarily large.
In the context of a migration from Windows-file servers on to NAS-systems, a new external service provider had to be phased in into the existing operations. To assist this, we defined new processes, tools and organisational units.
One of our experts gave a public talk on object-relational mapping with Open Source-tools.
We aided a client with a concern for the budget planning of certain IT tasks. The budget was to the tune of more than 10 million Euros.
We developed innovative Java-GUI-components based on modern component technology.

August
We assisted an important customer in the choice of a hardware technology vendor.
We gave a training on OpenLDAP for a corporate group.
We successfully completed a consultancy project for the redesign of a directory structure.
A portal based on a SAP PortalServer that we helped to develop went online and stayed online.
For a large customer with several branch offices, we analysed the quality of the sales force software, which was supplied by a third-party company. Thanks to the analysis and the given feedback, the quality of the software was significantly increased.

July
We integrated an existing B2B portal into a new portal based on SAP PortalServer 5. In order to deal with the technical peculiarities of PortalServer 5, we developed synchronisation routines that allow partial remote control of the LDAP directories used by the SAP software.
One of our experts gave a course on the IBM WebSphere application server including its clustering features.
We evaluated the proposals for the EAI architecture for the 130 outlets of a manufacturing company. Among others, this included the comparison of IBM WebSphere MQ as a central message broker with a light-weight open source-based XML-RPC solution.
One of our Unix experts managed the migration of all HP-UX-Servers between two data centers.

June
A WLAN billing component we programmed was finished on time and passed the component test.
We migrated a source code control system and test environment from old Solaris servers onto a new consolidated new Linux server.
To determine the future architecture of a family of new web applications, we presented a typology of modern web application frameworks.
One of our experts gave a talk about server configuration and operation at the Java User Group Munich.
We reengineered an existing application based on Visual Basic and Access.
We finished a new software version for location based services. We also finished a new GIS software allowing internet access for customer service employees.
We developed a prototype of a Java-GIS-library, which was built on two C-libraries using JNI.

May
With our new, enlarged team we were able to accept two difficult management consultancy projects.
We reviewed the source code of a problematic application developed by a 3rd party. We gave detailed recommendations to the management of the customer who bought the application.
One of our experts published an article comparing classical Unix servers with mass-produced PC-based Linux servers in the German periodical Computerwoche.

April
We led the integration of the .NET Common Language Runtime into the existing NT4.0-network of the traderoom of a bank. Special attention was given to package management and accordance with the security requirements. The CLR was integrated into the base installation of about 2000 clients.
We planned the migration of the backup infrastructure of a major car manufacturing company. The task involved migrating over 1500 backup clients from Veritas Netbackup 3.x to 4.5.
We conducted load tests and functional tests on SAP PortalServer.
We assisted in the implementation of project-based reporting about SAN-related costs. This facilitates easier internal cost control for the customer.
We assisted a corporate customer with a feasibility study into an LDAP directory.
We wrote the portal companents for a B2B e-business website that controls purchasing applications that went on to generate over 3 million Euros of turnover per month for our customer.

March
We conducted a workshop on LDAP and Linux for a pan-European customer.
We migrated and operated four big application servers with BEA Weblogic & IBM Websphere on an Oracle 8-backend.
We wrote and tested a Java-prototype of an innovative WebService-architecture.
We evaluated JSP-based newsletter tools.
The I18N-frontend that we wrote for an international website was rolled out for additional countries and now reaches 15 countries with country- and language-specific content.
We accepted the task to build and maintain an EnvironmentDB for a server landscape. The database stores assets, configurations, passwords and software versions.
For the execution of large integration tests we conducted the test environment planning.
One of our experts gave regular lectures on "International Consulting" for the MBA program at the IH Lindau.

February
We started a new project involving complex reengineering and code maintenance of a code-base of stack-based scripting languages.
We found and documented a serious security bug in a customer's big commercial database application. We recommended the necessary fixes.
After a good business year in 2002, we continued to grow and hire senior IT professionals - if you're serious about IT, contact us!

January
We assisted in the administration of a large farm of servers with several dozen Unix servers and DB instances.
Building on a modern persistence framework, we developed a prototype of a database-orientied web application very quickly.
We migrated 10 000 interlinked documents out of a proprietary database and into a standardized document management system.
We worked on the pilot project "follow the sun IT-support" for a German automotive company.
Substantial cost savings together with increased availability and quality of service were attained for the intranet servers of a multinational company. This was achieved by fine-tuning and active interoperability testing before the installation of new applications.
One of our specialists gave a lecture about testing at the computer science institut of the LMU. Additionally, we gave training courses in the system administration of HP-UX and Solaris.