Omegabit Liferay Enterprise Portal Hosting

Omegabit is a full service managed services hosting provider that specializes in Liferay runtime operations, optimization, and support.  It has established an excellent reputation for quality of service as the longest-operating and only dedicated Liferay Hosting Services Provider, Certified Partner and Digital Experience Platform Reseller.  Omegabit provides excellent out-of-the box solutions for any Liferay application, and is able to build to suit to meet any special requirements.

Omegabit brings a wealth of experience in terms of operational support, long-term infrastructure administration and maintenance, with special emphasis on Liferay operations.  It will be a key participant in the design and implementation of the customer infrastructure in collaboration with your development team.

Omegabit services many government and related agencies presently, including the City of San Francisco 311 Project, the Chicago Metro Agency for Planning, and Alignment Nashville (USA), as a few notable examples. Omegabit's highly experienced professional team is able to help inform important decisions relating to the long term stability, performance, and cost efficiency of operations for your site infrastructure.  Omegabit is an excellent complement to your development team and is included in this proposal as the recommended supplier of Liferay Digital Experience Platform Hosting and Operational Support services.

Omegabit Liferay Enterprise Portal Hosting Features:

• World-class Liferay tuned and optimized private cloud infrastructure with extensive security features and SOC2 compliance
• Customers operate from highly secure private VM VLAN "private cloud space" behind advanced security protection including Active Intrustion Protection, DDOS protection, optional PCI export filtering, security AI huristics (zero day quarnateen), plus proactive security-aware environment configuration and maintenance.
• Liferay Trained and Certified administration and engineering experts on staff
• Seasoned professionals with a deep background of relevant experience in .gov, .com and enterprise portal and Liferay infrastructure
• Longest operating Liferay Certified Hosting Partner in existence
• Most Managed Liferay Installations of Any Hosting Provider
• Only Hosting Provider Offering Comprehensive Support Throughout the Liferay Application Layer
• Preferred by Liferay Certified Developer Partners for Managed Services
• All US-based operations and administration with HQ in California
• Able to provide advanced infrastructure
• Direct administration and control by Omegabit's US-based and Liferay certified personnel
• Modern HP based high performance enterprise class servers with high reserve limits enforced (2.3Ghz+)
• Highly redundant physical infrastructure
• VMWare 5 Enterprise Plus capability including HA and FT capability
• Ability to scale to very large cpu and memory footprints (+36 cores; +256GB RAM)
• High Performance SSD Accelerated RAID SAN Storage and Network paths
• Active intrusion detection and prevention firewalls
• 10Gb infrastructure and Internet connectivity
• Fully Liferay cluster aware and capable Infrastructure (with deep tuning and troubleshooting experience)
• VM-image level backups and snapshots for comprehensive recovery
• VPN Connectivity for backoffice operations

Primary: Omegabit Operations Center (NOC)

Digital West Networks Inc., San Luis Obispo, CA

Secondary POPs:

One Wilshire, Los Angeles, CA (primary DR)

Equinix, San Jose, CA (secondary DR)

Equinix, New York City, NY (POP)

Omegabit host infrastructure comes complete with comprehensive monitoring, automated backups, and pre-built scripts for common operations tasks.  And, also provides support for the ongoing development and automation of processes including but not limited to automated software lifecycle management, data import/export and batch processing, user management, environment synchronization, etc.  Server environments support a comprehensive suite of scripting facilities at the server (Ubuntu OS), database (MySQL), and application "Liferay" layers of the system. This environment can optionally utilize alternate platform components, e.g. SQL Server and Windows OS.  However, the proposed footprint is asserted to provide the most cost efficient, manageable, and reliable solution for stated requirements.

The proposed infrastructure and software technology satisfies these requirements wholly, using modern Java cluster application standards and Liferay framework services and caching APIs.  These features are inherent to the proposed solution.

Omegabit offers a completely HA infrastructure with no single-point-of-failure in the chain systems.  And utilizes the latest VMWare, Nimble Storage, and high-speed network architecture available to ensure no bottlenecks to systems operations.  

The proposed solution also includes a fully clustered Liferay application, which provides additional redundancy at the critical logical layers of the software.  As with most clouds, all servers are redundant and software will automatically fail to another node in the event of a physical system failure. Moreover, Omegabit is able to provide additional "hot" fault-tolerance as an optional feature.

Omegabit also operates extensive backups including on-site runtime snapshots every 2hrs and continuous "hot" offsite archives to a secondary DR location.

Liferay can be clustered for HA at the application (JVM) level.  In that case we also ensure that your nodes are distributed across separate physical hardware.  This does provide the convenience of hot-redundancy at the application server layer, and the ability to support things like rotating outages for Liferay.  It does increase the cost both in terms of infrastructure and DXP licensing (2x, typically).  

For true HA, it would also be appropriate to cluster the search services (Elastic), although, they are less prone to breakage and change, relative to the app servers. And, in a perfect world, the DB as well.  However, that is more complicated:  MySQL does not cluster well; there are alternate strategies avaialbe (including hot-HA at the VMWare/cloud layer).  That said, the DB and search are typically the most stable layers and are least likely to benefit from HA in terms of practical ROI and actual risk vs. cost.  The alternative option is to employ a commercial RDBMS like Oracle in a cluster, which has licensing implications, but we are happy to host/accommodate.  If this is a near term concern, let's have a call to discuss options.  If this is a hypothetical, the answer is, yes, we can absolutely support it with enough resources in play and assuming it is cost-justified to the business. 

Load balancing is an inherent component of the proposed solution.  The proposed software solution, Liferay, is designed for clustering and load distribution and Omegabit is specially equipped to tune this configuration to best meet the demands of the user load.

Omegabit's Liferay-optimized private cloud infrastructure features the fastest and most secure host infrastructure available for mission-critical Internet-facing Web applications, complemented by a full suite of managed professional services for ongoing operational, technical, and engineering support. Omegabit is more well-equipped technologically, and in terms of staff professional skills, as compared to any commercial supplier to satisfy the requirements of this proposal. And, serves as the preferred hosting provider for government agencies as well as household brands servicing finance, healthcare, education, technology and consumer markets. Its infrastructure and professional services are a key component of this proposal and address technical and security requirements as well as operational support.  These are a complement to the services supplied by our partner.

Omegabit's standard infrastructure features meet or exceed all of the stated requirements, and exceed those available from public cloud providers - or, only where available at exceptional added or hidden expense by others.  And, Omegabit is able to build-to-suit, in order to meet most any specific requirement of the Client as its operational needs evolve.

Please be sure to do an apples to apples comparison of the proposed services included in the hosting component of this proposal, as it indicates important and necessary features and professional services relating to security, performance, and operational support.  Which, are frequently overlooked and not addressed by other hosting proposals in order to obfuscate hidden, real-world costs. These features will prove mission-critical to City of Berkeley operations and must be realized, one way or another. Omegabit's job is to help account for and manage these costs in the best interest of the Client.  Omegabit is also able to provide a continuity of support and maintenance that can span many iterations of change across varying contributing teams over extended periods of time. This continuity is critical to cost management and security enforcement as the site implementation evolves and grows.

Unlike generic cloud and off the shelf rackspace providers, Omegabit customer environments operate from highly secure private VLAN protected Private Cloud space behind advanced security protection including Active Intrusion Detecting firewalls with hourly updates to known threats, DDOS protection, optional PCI export filtering, security AI heuristics (zero day quarantine).  And also include proactive security aware environment configuration, management, maintenance/upkeep, and 24x7x365 application aware emergency response and technical support.

Omegabit also manages its customer environments with a deep level of awareness concerning specific site implementation and use case, customer-specific operational and security requirements, performance profile and patterns of change - comprehensively - through every layer of the software and hardware application stack.  Standard as well as emergency technical response is provided by specially qualified and informed staff that have specific awareness about the client's host and application infrastructure. This is an industry-exclusive feature of Omegabit managed services.

This proposal includes a comprehensive hosting and operational support plan, serviced by Omegabit Liferay Enterprise Portal Hosting, based in San Luis Obispo, CA.

The Liferay application framework is proposed as the foundation for this site design.  Liferay offers one of the fastest and most mature platforms available for traditional site and content management as well as full custom applications.  Liferay offers extensive caching and optimization features, out-of-the-box, plus an extensive framework of tools that can be used to optimize custom application components that may come at a future date.

The Omegabit Liferay host infrastructure is purpose-built to offer the fastest site delivery available with no performance bottlenecks at any layer of the application infrastructure.  Omegabit is specially equipped to assists with custom application tuning and optimization, where applicable. Response times for Omegabit hosted Liferay applications are typically on the order of milliseconds, with optimized page delivery and full-screen rendering typically in the 1-3 second range depending on on-screen features and content.  Some optional active security features like intrusion detection and Web request inspection can have nominal but noteworthy impacts to performance.  Omegabit is able to inform and advise the Client on the tradeoffs and benefits of these options, and takes an active and participatory role in the design and maintenance of the customer infrastructure to ensure excellent reliability and performance for the duration of operations.  

All Operating Systems are hot-add capable. Auto scaling is available. Some types of scaling changes necessitate a restart of a component of the application stack. The proposed infrastructure is designed to facilitate transparent changes wherever practical. Note that expansion of application server resources may have licensing implications. Resources are billed on a month-to-month basis and available on-demand. A role of Omegabit is to be able to help the Client anticipate and make adjustments that ensure a satisfactory level of service for users during peak periods and unexpected events without being reactive.  As well as to make most efficient use of allocated resources throughout the course of operations and as demand and use case evolves. Omegabit's managed approach typically provides better efficacy with similar cost control as to fully-automated approaches by ensuring that resources are not frequently auto-scaled only to accommodate some other inefficiency in the application implementation or, where other optimizations to hep normalization utilization can be of specific benefit.

Omegabit facilities and operations are SOC-2 certified in direct cooperation with its facilities partner, Digital West Networks, Inc.  A copy of the primary facilities SOC-2 certification is included with this submission and supplemental references for secondary operations are available on request.  Omegabit also features secondary Disaster Recovery and Point of Presence operations at facilities managed in partnership with Digital West and industry leading suppliers Equinix, and CoreSite featuring the most modern and compliant plant and core operations available in support of application specific certifications.  Omegabit directly owns and controls all infrastructure extending from the Internet drops: servers, firewalls, edge switching, storage, etc., and relies on its partner facilities for high-availability cooling, power, and physical plant security as well as emergency hands-on operations.

Omegabit follows extensive security protocols following best practices for PCI, FERPA, FEDRAMP and similar compliance modeled on industry standards and best practices. This includes emphasis on traditional IT and host infrastructure security for Internet providers, as well as specialized training relating to custom application designs and the implementation of Liferay, specifically. Many practices are modeled after requirements established from its broad base of customers operating sensitive applications for finance, healthcare, government, education and similar purposes. Omegabit is able to support most any compliance requirement and typically will establish operational policies that are considerate of best practices and the specific requirements of the Customer.

A Table of Contents (TOC), outlining procedural content has been provided for reference; full content is obfuscated due to its proprietary and sensitive nature. The following outlines are provided: "Omegabit Disaster Recovery PlanTOC", "Omegabit IT Security TOC", and the "Omegabit Employee HandbookTOC". Collectively, these documents cover many of the issues identified in this list. Other items are covered by our Operational Wikis. A supplemental document titled "Omegabit Information Security Questionnaire" is also included, which addresses the most common questions concerning overall security practices, capabilities, and options.  Omegabit is also able to maintain a custom policy and procedures for customers with special needs, e.g. PCI or similar compliance. A sample policy statement titled "Omegabit Operations Policy Guidelines and Recommendations - Redacted Generic" has been provided of an example maintained with a PCI compliant tennant.

The proposed approach to most projects intentionally includes three complementary layers of support, to support the full lifecycle and operations, indefinitely.  Each component should be considered a critical element of a comprehensive support strategy. Through various server and web level monitoring, the team will be notified of many possible issues within moments of a site down, server down or major functionality down situation.

1. Your development team will be providing ongoing custom site development and maintenance support, as well as in-application administration support for the site implementation.
2. Omegabit provides comprehensive operational support with a deep awareness about Liferay-based site operations and, patterns of behavior.  Omegabit is the first-line, 24x7x365 support for emergencies, and typically is able to help resolve issues before they have to be escalated for additional support.  A 1-800 number and email support will escalate initially to Omegabit for support requests. Depending on the specific situation, Omegabit will leverage your development team, or potentially Liferay Support to help rapidly escalate issues that require attention in a manner that is not typical of most hosting providers or framework suppliers.
3. Liferay DXP Software, used as the foundation for the site design, includes comprehensive software framework support including regular security patches, as well as customer-specific hotfixes to critical issues. Liferay also provides critical framework support, patching and developer tools and for customizations to ensure that any modifications stay current.

The strategy proposed will focus around the experience of the user and how we can build a site that is familiar to culture and lhistory of your users.  With a strong focus on user experience, the proposed updated site will be centered on conforming to today's web browsers standards and the diverse types of media available to be displayed on.  We will work with your staff to review and analysis the user traffic patterns to determine the focal point of the taxonomy of the site. We will also look at customer feedback from both residential and commercial users to focus on the key driving factors for visiting the site.  We will also work with the you and come up with a comprehensive plan to drive more user traffic and make content easier to find with the least amount of effort.

The user experience is important to the overall reception of the the new site.  The development team will use its experience in Analytics and User Interface Experience to provide a comprehensive report on where users are focusing their attention and work with you to provide a better marketing of initiatives you are focused on.  The SSAI Team has experience in developing strategies around campaigns and analysis of web sites. The development team has experience in providing feedback for many high-profile websites, both on the consumer level and government level.

Our information architecture process is as follows:

Establish Website Goals
 

Our information architecture process begins with identifying the business objectives of the website. The team will meet with the key stakeholders to determine the goals and central purpose of website to devise an effective user-centric solution.  We'll discuss the current features and limitations of the current website to determine the desired user experience objectives and recommended website design elements/functions. We'll work with your staff to identify customer experience objectives and establish a project timeline.

Deliverables: Business Objectives Summary that outlines the the top level goals and objectives.

Define User Intent
 

Good information architecture greatly influences the user experience. Knowing the users and their intent on the website will guide the IA team on how to structure the website to satisfy the needs of the customer and insure a rewarding experience.  To identify the various users of the website and their information-retrieval behavior, the AI team will conduct user-interviews, create personas and develop user scenarios or stories to establish the ‘big picture' of who the users are and their key site objectives.

Deliverables: Personas / User Profiles of each site user type

Assess the Content
 

The IA team will do a full analysis of the existing site content to gain a thorough understanding of the current website's purpose and structure. The AI team will review and familiarize him/herself with the layout and organization of the current website focusing on accessibility, content presentation, navigation structures, organizational architecture, content placement, etc. Using a content analysis tool, all content is stored in an inventory documentation system and used for content assessment, categorization and migration.

Deliverables: Inventory Documentation System

Organize the Content

Based on the user analysis, site analytics and business goals, the IA team will conduct a card sorting session and other taxonomy technics with key stakeholders and users to define section labels and key metadata to group the content into appropriate categories.  Content prioritization and hierarchies are established. The final product is a complete site map that identifies the entire structure and organization of the website.
 

Deliverables: Site Map

Define Navigation and Site Flow

Once the site structure is established, how users navigate the website needs to be determined. Some users want to find content quickly with minimal clicks, others may want to do exploration. The key is to provide methods of navigating the site that users can quickly understand. Using the priorities and hierarchies established in the content organization session, the IA team creates a navigation system using interactive wireframes. Wireframes allow a customer to understand how a site or tool will interact before it is built, and helps further capture, refine and confirm requirements. We use a wireframing tool called Axure RP which creates clickable/interactive wireframes that can be exported as system specification which provide information to developers and further define system interactions. These wireframes serve as the visual blueprint for how a user will navigate and find important content. Only layout and content placement is determined, design elements such as color and graphics are not considered.
 

Deliverables: Interactive Wireframes

Conduct Usability Testing
 

Key stakeholder and users provide feedback on the functionality and navigation of the new website by doing usability testing. Using test plans, users will complete typical tasks using the wireframes while the IA team observes and take notes. The goal is to identify any usability problems, collect qualitative and quantitative data and determine the participant's satisfaction with the site layout and navigation. A usability report summarizing the results is produced.
 

Deliverables: Usability Report

Overview

Our team will provide in-person and online training via teleconferencing to the designated personnel on how to manage the new website using the proposed Liferay CMS system.

We will identify times to meet with and coordinate training with your staff. Options may include one-time training, or optionally through a regular/weekly seminar depending on need.

We will provide training and technical support as needed for Web Content Management System users. During an initial rollout we provide high level one on one support and/or on call support to help ensure adoption and success.

After training, we will seek feedback from the Berkeley staff to validate and improve training materials. Based on questions and requested walkthroughs, we will enhance materials to cover common question areas, and further build out areas that may provide limited information.

We will provide training and documentation materials as needed in support of major system changes or upgrades for the site and applications we support for the website.

We will work with you to define and support the creation of additional training material as requested and as time and staffing permit.

Training Methods and Materials

1. Classes will include complete training documentation in PowerPoint and PDF formats and will be available online.

2. Online presentations will be recorded.

3. Training documents will be stored in a common and available location which is accessible to end users, supports versioning and tracking and will be maintained by training and/or help desk staff.

4. The training will be a hands-on learning environment with training lessons demonstrated followed by the your admin users trying it out on a training website. Video tutorials will also be available to supplement the classroom.

The training will cover the following areas:

Page and Site Structure Management

The CMS system allows site administrators to easily add and manage pages on the website. Create pages using custom site and page templates and layouts developed specifically for your website. Re-ordered pages quickly using a drag-in-drop method.

Content Management

Learn how to add the different content types (news, events, calendars, reports, blogs, profile media slideshows, custom types, etc.) to the website through the CMS system.  

User, Roles and Permissions

The new website will be a permission-based system with users granted certain functions and privileges based on roles. During the training, we will review how to create and manage roles and permissions and discuss other topics such as user groups and workflows.

Media and Documents

Easily manage photos, videos, presentations, documents, and other media types within the Liferay system. The training sessions will include specific steps on how manage these assets including how to link to outside systems such as YouTube and other media sites.

Our partners produce websites from local to regional to international scales, so we are well-suited to fulfill the need for a rich and intricate identity.  We excel at working large amounts of content into spaces that are open and inviting -- that utilize intelligent responsive design to clearly communicate ideas on mobile devices as easily as on large screens.  The result is a positive user experience, instilling a sense of dependability that is reinforced with each visit.

We particularly excel in our role when working collaboratively with our customer to plan their site.  This will allow us to best understand the ways that different types of users will be interacting with it, and how to easily route them to the areas that are most helpful to them.  To achieve these key goals, we use a phased approach.

The creative team will begin with an initial discovery phase for your website design. During this stage, we will further explore the site's current issues and the customer's requirements to establish the best UI, UX, and eventual design to represent you.  The experience will need to be modern but also reflect your heritage to establish its identity -- so past, present, and unique assets will be studied to accurately reflect its character in what will become the design model.

Sitemap production and dynamic wireframing happens in tandem with the discovery phase, with the resulting UI decisions becoming incorporated into functional mobile and desktop wireframes. These will be user-tested and then iteratively modified before each is approved -- examining site usability for a wide range of target users.  The goal is that each visitor to the site be able to easily navigate their way to an intended area with a minimal, productive interaction.

As key areas of the wireframe are approved, the design implementation phase begins.  The site's style and user experience will be a unique intersection of elements such as color tones, visual imagery, typography and layout – while incorporating the interface guidelines set in the approved wireframes.  The end result will not only be efficient and functional, but also visually compelling.

Our designers and UI experts form a part of the project team from the earliest stages of the project to help ensure the site looks and interacts as beautifully as it functions. The art staff is tightly integrated with the development staff to bring an integrated approach to web development for CMS and state-of-the-art toolsets.  Our focus on quality user experience has garnered the trust of various high-profile NASA websites such as the GLOBE and GLOBE Observer programs (which engage students and the public as citizen scientists, working alongside the greater scientific community – via web tools and simple yet powerful phone applications), and the My NASA Data website (which brings vast amounts of science data into the hands of students and teachers, but with ease and accessibility).