Atricore

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of technology solutions for an HR membership association.

What challenge were you trying to address with Atricore?

We’re currently engaged with Atricore for technology platform integration.

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the last six years, we’ve been leveraging Atricore’s enterprise solutions platform to allow our organization to utilize a single sign-on technology platform. They’re also enabling us to consolidate our customer-centric organization into a global view of personal profile accounts, so we can integrate a single sign-on solution across a lot of our entities.

What is the team composition?

We would generally have about five resources including an account manager, developers, and the director.

How did you come to work with Atricore?

At the time, they provided a very flexible implementation and solution that was geared to exactly what we were looking for.

How much have you invested with them?

On average, we spend about $40,000–$50,000 USD per year.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in March 2016.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Generally, we have about 40–50 integrated sites into our core business operations, and our CMSs are merged with our single sign-on platform. Currently, we roughly have 300,000 active members logging in to our content site, and we’re also closing in on garnering 1.5 million customers accessing our site throughout the year.

How did Atricore perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform very well as they have support portals and direct communication through phone and email.  I’m quite happy with their level of service because they go above and beyond the scoping to provide us with POCs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We like the pool of resources they have because our connection with them has been really steady. They’re very attentive and the turnaround time is customized to the resources that we have — because of that, there’s been little turnover on both sides.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were a couple of instances regarding our administrative consoles where we would be the ones to use it more than they did. We were going back and forth with them for the iterations for months at a time, while we hammered out all the bugs and issues of the product.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they were trying to roll out new features that nobody else needed at the time, but it would’ve been nice to have that accomplished earlier in the life cycle.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to make sure that you’re clear with your business initiatives and implement the right strategies for both long and short-term engagement.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I retired from an administrative group that provides support services to various class courts in Georgia, which has seven different types of courts. I worked for several years as CTO; I was responsible for the technology and support provided to the courts, including applications and websites for different organizations.

What challenge were you trying to address with Atricore?

Courts in Georgia are independent, so there isn’t a single-service provider environment like some other states, such as Pennsylvania and Florida. In Georgia, each court uses a system they created or a court management system by a commercial vendor. We wanted to create a portal that would allow somebody without knowledge of the systems to come out and get information about cases they might be involved in.

We were looking to manage identities for citizens to allow them to connect to our different services. Also, we wanted to provide some integration with the State Bar of Georgia so attorneys could go through our interface using their bar association username and password to get in.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Atricore worked on development. Initially, we started working with the State Bar on what information we’d like to have to set up a connection between our system and their association. We tested it, and through that integration, we allowed over 9000 attorneys to connect to the system in our first iteration.

We also worked with a couple of providers to get and share information for the handoff to their systems. In particular, we worked with a large provider to allow people to create billing accounts because attorneys often have one. That way, users were given the opportunity to create an account with that vendor to do transactions without having to re-log.

Over time, we worked with Atricore to move things to AWS hosting. They developed an Amazon Machine Image that could host the cloud services so we wouldn’t have to keep a dedicated machine for the project.

Additionally, we used a third-party vendor for some of the more complex things that we needed to do with the integration.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Gianluca (CEO) for the sales and contract negotiations and Sebastian (Co-Founder & CTO), who did an outstanding job. Once the project went underway, the majority of it was done directly by the technical team.

How did you come to work with Atricore?

Atricore’s team was responsive to questions and interested in ensuring we had all the information we needed. Also, they weren’t interested in charging us tons of money and then leaving. In government projects, vendors build something, leave, and then you’re tied to that vendor to support the product. We wanted our technical team to be involved in development so they could make changes without having to create new contracts.

How much have you invested with them?

It was around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2017–March 2018.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The portal was well supported, and it was also well received by its users and the leadership of the judicial branch. It included more features, like links to sites that were commonly needed to be accessed.

How did Atricore perform from a project management standpoint?

They did very well. Atricore was good about scheduling meetings, being on time, and making sure everyone was clear on the tasks and steps to take to stay on track and deliver the project.

We did most of the work remotely. It was before COVID-19, but as a technology-oriented group, the team was interested in doing it as remotely as possible, which helped us save on cost.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One thing was their flexibility. Secondly, they stood out for their ability to provide capabilities in different environments. The team could talk about any system with external interfaces.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honesty, I can’t think of anything. They did an outstanding job.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask a lot of questions and talk to them about doing a proof of concept. We did a small one, which helped demonstrate that the system could connect to some of our applications. It wasn’t full-feature, but it proved to our business owners that it could be implemented quickly and do everything we needed.

Also, if you’re willing to do projects remotely, it’s very easy to work with them. You don’t have to worry about having a highly-paid consultant just sitting around; you can schedule the time you need to work with Atricore. If there are pieces of work that you feel comfortable doing, they’re happy to support you. Overall, they want you to be self-sufficient, so you won’t have to constantly make support calls unless you want to.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the President of a software company that delivers a dispute management solution to financial services companies around the world.

For what projects/services did your company hire Atricore, and what were your goals?

Our solution will utilize the Atricore JOSSO EE component to achieve certain user authentication and security requirements.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We have had a partnership with Atrictore for their JOSSO EE solution for several years now. Our clients are happy with the solution and the support they receive from Atrictore.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We brought in Atricore to support the implementation of their JOSSO EE solution as it pertains to the deployment of my company's software solution.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

With any given implementation, there is typically a user authentication and security expert that will be appointed to represent the client. This individual will work with the appointed Atrictore JOSSO EE project lead as well as our Solution Architect.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our clients are pleased - the solution does what it advertises, is relatively straightforward to implement, and the support is timely and engaging.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Prompt, courteous, diligent.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I believe we share some elements of a common culture. The team at Atricore operates much in the same way that my company operates although we create and implement different products.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I have been pleased with Atricore from what we have seen over the last several years and I continue to expect that they will continue innovate as technology evolves.