Developed by BSL, Pulse is a real-time news service used by a large international organization. Pulse has been a great success story, evolving into a global service used in more than 20 countries. Until now, the service has been hosted in the Netherlands. However, we are moving Pulse to a global data center in Germany. As part of the Pulse migration we will update our software to meet new security guidelines. We will also integrate Pulse with a new authentication system, and a new world-wide employee directory service.
Pulse Smart News – Premium newsfeeds
Based on Oracle and Exalead technology, Pulse provides real-time news briefings for more than 10,000 employees, working throughout Europe/Asia and the US.
Pulse has access to a database of over 7 million premium content articles, refreshed continually from over 600 sources. It also imports new content each day from websites and RSS feeds. Up to 100,000 new articles arrive daily. Using around 2,500 predefined news topics, we classify each new article as it is imported. Users subscribe to the topics, so they can receive daily updates. This means that links to the most interesting articles are delivered automatically via e-mail, or pushed to their mobiles. Users can also subscribe to news topics online, and view them in the company website.
New Identity Management service (IdAM)
We authenticate Pulse users by accessing an LDAP service on the NL network. Whilst this provides authentication services, with access to a global database of user accounts, it does not provide an end-to-end Single Sign On (SSO) service. As part of the Pulse migration, we will start using a new global service for Identity Management: IdAM. IdAM makes it easy for users to use a single logon for multiple systems and services. So they can access any authorized system with one identical account. The result is seamless, efficient movement and integration between applications, services and geo-locations.
Our initial work will focus on designing and configuring an IdAM installation based on a Shibboleth Identity Provider plug-in and Apache Tomcat. This will be linked to the global IdAM service when the servers are relocated.
People MDM service
We make extensive use of employee information within Pulse. For example: employment status, name, and e-mail address. We also use their geographic location to restrict access to sources that can only be used in specific countries. And of course, we use the e-mail addresses to send news alerts, and to manage user subscriptions.
As part of the Pulse migration, we will update the methods Pulse uses to access employee information. The new release will make use of a global client service: People MDM.
We are introducing People MDM in response to the need for strict privacy control enforcement. Organizations face tight limitations on the data that can be stored for each individual. What’s more, there are restrictions on how the information can be shared, used and stored. And to make matters more complex, these limitations may vary between countries. The People MDM service provides the required levels of granularity. It meets the need to store personnel information centrally, whilst authorizing access to this information by certified applications too.
By adopting People MDM, we can increase the accuracy of the information that Pulse uses. And at the same time, we will meet the stricter guidelines required by global corporate services.
Pulse Migration planning
Work is underway. Both developments are progressing on schedule. Our engineers will complete a new release supporting the IdAM service and PMDM at the end of October. And what’s more, we’re making use of this opportunity to include a number of additional updates and improvements too.
So according to our planning, our client should be able to test a new release of Pulse in the second week of November!
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