New York Times

The Challenge

Many of the New York Times web sites include a real estate section that allows readers to view related articles, follow interest rate trends, search for mortgage options, and make informed financing decisions based on helpful tools. The New York Times saw an opportunity to provide even greater value to the community by adding a Home Finance Center to their online real estate offerings across a number of its newspaper properties.

The Assembly

The New York Times explored several options including leveraging their existing real estate platform, custom building the section, purchasing an off-the-shelf solution, or purchasing the entire section directly from a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider. By purchasing an off-the-shelf solution or purchasing the section from a SaaS vendor, the company would have needed to license different pieces of the section multiple times as the section was launched by its various publications, which would have resulted in high costs. Pure custom development using a conventional methodology with either internal or external resources would certainly prove to be expensive, lengthy, and resource inefficient.

To research and scope the options, the New York Times partnered with Optaros to conduct a two-week requirements analysis and scoping phase to document a matrix of required functionality and validate these requirements against three open source and two commercial content management systems. Optaros also compared the cost of implementation for each alternative. Upon completion of the two-week effort, The New York Times chose a direction and hired Optaros to design the user experience under the umbrella of their existing brands, and then implement and launch to production a system that would allow them to take control of the entire Home Finance section.

Utilizing its OptAM methodology, Optaros assembled an entire solution for the Home Finance section of NYTimes.com using all open source components. The scope of the effort included a content management system to help control the articles within the section, an easy-to-use rich interface for back-end tools, functionality that provided a way for consumers to make contact with lenders, and the ability to supply new content to The New York Times Company’s Web sites. In all of these areas, no business logic was custom built from scratch. Instead, all components were harvested by Optaros from the open source community then assembled into a mission-critical solution that exceeded original requirements without compromising budget or project schedule. Optaros utilized a service oriented architecture for the solution to scale for future changes in functionality and to meet the required performance of ten million page views per month with 97% up-time, per system specifications set by NYTimes.com.

To accommodate for the nine different site brands under The New York Times Company umbrella that would eventually utilize the Home Finance section, Optaros constructed the interface in a modular way so that it could be re-branded and “re-skinned” with minimal resources. Any changes to the global style and layout are automatically inherited by all instances, minimizing maintenance efforts.

The Results

In the six weeks following the launch of the Home Finance Center, NYTimes.com enjoyed an increase in traffic to the Home Finance section, which has also become a new revenue stream for the company. “By assembling a solution from open source components, we created a highly flexible site that we can adjust to readers’ preferences at a much lower cost than the alternatives,” said Ira Silberstein, Vice-President, Classified Product Development at NYTimes.com. “Optaros delivered what they said, on-time and on-budget, even with a demanding timeline and changes to requirements.”

The flexibility and transparency of Optaros’ OptAM application assembly approach and open source components proved beneficial throughout the project. As elements of the Home Finance section were prototyped, Optaros could easily swap components as needed to accommodate design changes without lengthy procurement cycles or added costs. Each open source component’s roadmap, bugs, etc. could be accessed and reviewed in advance of integrating the component. Open source components are supported by the community, so needed fixes are obtained rapidly. For some components that were customized for The New York Times Company, Optaros committed the code back to the open source community on the client’s behalf for additional community support.

Optaros estimates that had the project been completely custom developed, the length of the fourteen-week project would have been at least double. By utilizing Optaros’ OptAM methodology and open source software, Optaros delivered The New York Times Company an application that exceeded original requirements by enabling a truly agile development effort.