Swiss telco sunrise offers its business customers hosting with value-added products
Under its sunrise label, TDC Switzerland AG (a subsidiary of the Danish TDC Group) is offering all business customers in the internet area the sunrise weboffice package. In addition to internet access, hosting, virtual e-mail servers and various software tools, the package includes the sunrise website creator, a homepage construction kit and content management system produced by CM-AG of Cologne, Germany.
For residential customers the sunrise website creator is included in the hosting starter product sunrise photoweb. An offline component for easy upload of digital images in online photo albums is also included.
Successful provider of integrated telecommunications solutions: sunrise
Innovative ideas and trend-setting technologies have made sunrise the only new company in the Swiss telecommunications industry to present intelligent solutions in the fixed network, cellular telephony, data, internet and global business fields.
As Switzerland‘s second-largest provider with some 2500 staff, sunrise currently provides services to more than 2.6 million customers (by way of comparison: Switzerland has a population of approx. 7.4 million).
The value-added factors generating dial-up and access customer loyalty
In the internet sector, sunrise offers solutions designed for everyone from the private customer to the major business client; these solutions range from a simple dial-up service to ADSL to leased lines or your own fibre-optic connection.
Throughout, the main aim is to guide dial-up and access customers towards the hosting area, intensifying customer relations in the process.
The fact that this can only succeed by means of appropriate value-added factors is something they realised early on at sunrise: in June 2001, half a year after a majority share was taken over by Tele Denmark and the merger with the cellular-phone provider diAx to create TDC Switzerland AG, sunrise began setting up its sunrise weboffice offering for the internet-customer sector: a scalable combination of the most up-to-date e-business components.
Along with unlimited internet access, domain hosting and e-mail servers, sunrise also offers software products such as sunrise i-shop and sunrise surfkit, a compendium of useful internet tools (e-mail manager, calendar, contact management, etc.).
CM4all technology for use and maintenance of hosting services
The sunrise website creator has been included to enable all sunrise weboffice customers to create a professionally designed internet website.
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It requires no programming knowledge and can be uploaded to a leased webspace by the push of a button.
In addition to this, customers can maintain their website contents in their browser by means of an integrated WYSIWYG editor.
All of this can be done online, without software installation or prior technical knowledge. This also contains the use of the most important CGI‘s such as counter, feedback form, guest book and online photo album.
A user-friendly configuration screen makes even flash intros an integral component of the sunrise website creator.
Depending on the sunrise weboffice package, there are bundle versions free of charge which contain 8 or 15 pages of internet presentation. There are 40 different design templates available for use to create one‘s own internet website.
Multiple upgrade packages enable, firstly, use of up to 100 design templates and, secondly, a higher and potentially limitless number of editable webpages.
Fast implementation with professional project management
Initial contacts to Content Management AG were already established in February 2001 at the Internet Expo (iEX) in Zurich. And once the go-ahead for a joint project was sounded in late December 2001, work had to proceed at full throttle. Already in early February 2002 at the iEX in Zurich the sunrise website creator was presented in a prototype version. CM-AG adapted the user interface of the sunrise website creator according to the sunrise style guide.
Along with this, the requirements of a customer center were jointly defined. The end user has the possibility of managing his or her own master data, passwords, selected products and website projects. Sunrise administrators can consult and manage their own end users‘ master data, invoices and payment transactions.
„Sunrise marks the first time we have implemented the CM4all customer center for an OEM partner: a complementary component optimised through our product range and developed on the basis of our own experience”, recalls Cornel Schnietz, technical head and project manager at CM-AG.
„To accomplish this, not only did we have to adapt the design of the software but in particular we also had to link our CM4all server with the billing system and the sunrise weboffice domain administration.” A further challenge lay in the implementation of the various bundle packages in the customer center. The system is designed to automatically assign sunrise customers to their respective pricing rate and maintain constant tabs on this even when package constellations change.
The standards-oriented technology of the CM4all server has proved to be an advantage in this respect: 100% XML- and XSLT-based, the server uses the platform-independent SOAP standard (Simple Object Access Protocol) as its communications protocol. Authorisation is password-protected against a sunrise database - end-customer security is guaranteed via SSL encryption.
New language versions, CM4all Photo Tool and offline components
Since its first launch, the sunrise website creator is available in a German and an English language version. In the middle of 2003, it was launched in a French language version as well.
In the beginning of 2004, the sunrise weboffice was replaced by the new sunrise domain product line. Each sunrise domain package includes the sunrise website creator as an integral software component.
In spring of 2004, sunrise started marketing the CM4all Photo software with its new hosting starter product “sunrise photoweb”. It includes both the sunrise website creator and a software for easy image upload.
With this offline software sunrise customers can transfer their digital camera pictures directly into the sunrise website creator. The new software is based on the IUI (Inductive User Interface) standard. The main features are: selection, sorting, and naming of photos destined for the Internet, and simple image enhancement functions such as rotation and cropping. Following the online authentication and uploading, the pictures are displayed in the album design of your choice directly within the sunrise website creator.
The sunrise product manager is confident: “Through the addition of new hosting customers, increased customer loyalty as well as an on-going increase in turnover, we expect the investment in CM4all technology to result in further growth. Both CM-AG and sunrise will profit from this!”