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university distributor
Distributors of university textbooks, generally have a catalog of physical
publications that they distribute through multiple channels (universities).
These distributors have complex business rules and contracts that constitute
the rights for each of these universities.
The basic nature of digital distribution adds many complexities to these
relationships. In fact, many of the 'benefits' of digital content can end up
short-circuiting critical business models.
| Property |
Distributor Benefit |
Obstacles |
| Digital content is easily reproduced |
Reduction of production, manufacturing, and
distribution costs |
Access to content must be secured to avoid
piracy and content devaluation |
| Inventory is limitless |
Inventory does not need to be estimated ahead of
time and does not sell out |
The distributor must rely on the university to
enforce and account for inventory |
| Digital distribution allows for a new way of
distributing content |
Distributors have the ability to add value added features to their content -
collaboration, online multi-media, full-text searching, instant access,
previews, try before you buy, and more
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Value added features require development, testing, hosting and many other
efforts that may be new to a university
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In putting together a solution for university distributors, it is important
that they remain in control of the business rules and security under which they
distribute their content. In addition, it is imperative that they can create
new university storefronts quickly and with the options that define the
relationship.
Goals
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Provide a central catalog with custom metadata, full-text searching, and
administration.
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Allow new university storefronts to be created administratively - without
additional development.
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Set up the business rules that define a university's virtual catalog (the
content that they have rights to distribute from the distributor's central
catalog).
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Provide custom branding per university.
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Store separate customer databases per university, in order to keep customer
information separate.
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Allow each university a separate administration console for viewing/editing
reports, inventory, customers, and more.
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Allow each university to customize the featured digital content on their site.
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Allow university to sell content or subscriptions to categories of content.
Include payment collection and processing.
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Allow secure online and offline access to content that is purchased or content
that is part of a puchased subscription.
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Allow professors to add notes to the online version of the text books and make
these notes available to the students
Solution
The solution will be a custom implementation of matterCast Channel Server.
Channel Server comes with built in support for a central catalog, channels,
virtual catalogs per channel (based on inventory and business rules), users,
payment processing, integration to Verisign Payment Services, custom branding
per channel, as well as other base components for simplifying web development.
In order to allow secure, high quality access for online documents, the
solution will use Scalable Vectors Graphics (SVG) format. SVG provides
high-quality presentation that rivals PDF, and it has the standardization and
ease of manipulation of HTML. Channel Server comes with SVG Imprint, PDF to SVG
conversion engine, SVG server and SVG viewer. For secure offline access, the solution
will be integrated with a Digital Rights Management (DRM) product such as Adobe
Content Server or Microsoft Reader. This will give quality offline access for
students and provide the necessary security to prevent piracy.
In order to allow professors to add notes to online textbooks and collaborate
with students, the solution will need custom modules for defining the
relationships between courses, textbooks, professors, and students. Once these
modules are defined, the relationships will be used to drive the built-in notes
feature in Channel Server.
Benefits
Channel Server provides the majority of the necessary features out of the box.
This allows the quick definition and creation of a content distribution site
for the university textbook distributor. High cost custom development is kept
to a minimum in this solution. Additionally, the solution is built on a
pre-tested, scalable product which reduces testing and maintenance costs.
The framework components of Channel Server provide a base set of features to
assist in building the custom, university domain objects (course, student,
professor). This allows transactional, channel aware components and
administration interfaces to be easily created and integrated.
What's Next?
Once the university domain model is built into the solution, upcoming features
for this university distribution site may include:
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Ability for students to see a list of their classes and textbooks needed for
the semester.
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Allow students to 'subscribe' to their texts for the semester, rather than
purchasing copies of the book. Access to the online and offline copies should
expire following the semester.
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Add in additional collaboration features, such as online questions and answers
per course and textbook.
To learn more, contact sales@mattercast.com
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