Information-Cascade
Pendragon Professional Publishing Ltd, is an information provider, a wholely owned subsiduary of Thomson (one of the world's largest publishing groups) and a part of Gee Ltd (UK division) in Swiss Cottage. Pendragon provide a range of vertical applications to the Legal and professional markets, with Perspective as their flagship product. See www.pendragon.co.uk The data centre was run by Thomson Financial Services.
(( NB: This has all changed since then!! ))
Perspective is "everything you ever wanted to know about Pension law", including Primary Law, Ombudsmans determinations, etc, The SGML data set is installed onto a client site, and accessed through a customised (EBT/INSO) browser, over the clients LAN, with additional "news" online web-content, and incremental updates over an ISDN extranet link.
My first responsibility as Technical Manager, was to catch up. The product had been sold on the basis of having an online component (recent news and updates), but with no online deliverability, sales were not forthcoming until the new year.
The chosen online method, was an ISDN link to the data-centre, with FTP updates, and a DynaWeb(tm) web server on a Solaris-2.5 server (which also does the SGML book generation process).
My first tasks were to install the data to potential customer sites, to talk to them about extranet links, and to review the access policy between them and us. Several of our customers (large law firms), had already fire-walled off the Internet, but didn't have experience of (ISDN) extranet links (ie links beyond their first connection). Others needed a registered subnet installing, and a gentle introduction to IP (to get the browsing facilities). I worked with the TFS people, to decide upon an ISDN connection method (Cisco-1003) and installation procedures.
It immediately became evident, that client IT departments could not simply accept a raw outgoing line, and needed protection against the unexpected, or even from TFS employees (who the Law firms see as "outsiders"). They could not easily modify their pre-configured firewalls to add an extranet connection through it, and needed a solution that provided them with some protection.
I upgraded the router configuration to include a packet filter / firewall, hence providing protection. This also involved updating our security policy with regards to our own security, as well as our customers. Interestingly enough, it also exposed an irritating shortfall in the security of Cisco router access lists (ask).
My responibilities unfolded to include the enabling of local IT facilities, (beyond the PC management provided by the internal Gee IS department). Basically all the editorial work takes place in Swiss-Cottage, the data centre is in central London.
With us "over here" and the main server "over there", I developed the link, purchased an ISDN line, and configured the solaris to allow Win95 <--> Solaris disk shares over the WAN. As well as uploading new SGML to the server, we wanted to download the generated books. I setup a backup method, of mirroring several areas (300 MB), including the source data every night, to a local PC, with minimal FTP increments (10 MB/day after the first mirror).
With the core business data, now available locally, I also instigated a backup method, where the data is automatically prepared into an on-disk iso9660 CD image (overnight). Then the site could cut a CD during the day, or choose not to (too many CD's is confusing, and the data is already stored on two different sites).
The MD now has a CDROM of the Perspective source on his desk, readable on any PC (with a CDROM). I've left him with the problem of securing access to that information from others (break CD in half), but he does have an off-site backup, and access to individual files, visibly held on the CD (rather then a tape that is _supposed_ to hold the information). The new permanent Technical Manager has scripts that do it, with options of adjusting it to do something different.
I also clarified to management, the need to have more than one delivery route to the customer, so that new customers who wanted Internet access to their updates and dynaweb pages, could get them through their existing firewall policies, and their existing Internet channels (some significantly faster than ISDN BRI-2). I resourced, prototyped and set-up scripts to maintain an FTP gateway, and an initial configuration of a HTTP proxy (to get through our firewall), and handed them over to the new Technical Manager, so that the marketing director could evaluate Internet access as a potential business requirement.