In-Depth
Gannett Media Technologies
Steve Burns, V. P. of technology for Gannett Media Technologies has recently enlarged an innovative voice-response system for auto and real estate ad listings to include a Web interface. For car dealers and realtors, the benefit is last-minute filing of ads. For the papers, the numerous benefits include the fact that the buyers input the data. Burns used Magic Software’s, Irvine,Calif., Magic 8.0 to implement the system. He favors that software for flexibility, among other things. The deployment vehicle, he notes, can be Java, HTML or ActiveX. "Magic 8.0 works with all of them," Burns said.
While throughput is not a particular issue today, preparing for future traffic is. Employing a Magic client plug-in, Burns’ system can isolate some processing tasks at the client to conserve bandwidth. Because a scalable distributed system approach and broker software are in place, Burns notes, "[NT] servers can be added as needed."