We wanted a more interactive website, and one that we could publish content on frequently.  Our basic requirements were:

• Clean professional design elements
• A blog
• Case studies by business unit
• Solution profiles for the solutions we offer
• How to communicate with us
• Lead generation capabilities
• Content management features
• Search

This website is the result of a rapid development effort to meet those requirements.

Technology

The platform we selected for this new website includes:

• Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• ASP.Net and C#
• Windows Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008
• Microsoft Bing Maps
• javascript

Design

The entire website is a SharePoint site.  It is implemented with custom ASP.Net master pages, which are not based on stock SharePoint master pages at all.  Stylesheets are all custom as well.  The designers involved practiced industry best practice for web page layout and styling.

There is a variety of content managed in SharePoint lists, including the blog posts, case studies, solutions, and portfolio items.

Showcase

'Showcase' is a SharePoint list that drives the content for a variety of areas of the website. 

On the home page, there is a rotating Showcase display.  This is driven from showcase items of all types.  If you visit the case studies page on the site, you'll see Showcase items that are categorized as 'Case Study.'  If you visit the page for our Geospatial Solutions, you'll see showcase items that are associated with our Geospatial business unit, including case studies and solutions. 

It's a simple mechanism to manage a lot of varied content on our website, and each page just filters the list according to what is appropriate for it to show.

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Until December 30th, 2009, get up to 30 percent savings on Business Productivity Online Standard Suite per user monthly subscription step-up licenses from Core CAL Suite Software Assurance or Enterprise CAL Suite Software Assurance.

This promotion is available for:

• Microsoft Enterprise Agreement
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Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite includes rights to Microsoft Exchange Online Standard, Microsoft Office Communications Online Standard, Microsoft Office Live Meeting Standard, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Online Standard.

Contact us at 850.893.6741 ext. 1011 for more information

Florida's Lieutenant Governor, Jeff Kottkamp, visited ISC's headquarters in Tallahassee today.  Lt. Governor Kottkamp is currently running for Florida Attorney General.  His campaign website is here: http://www.jeffkottkamp.com.

ISC management took the Lt. Governor of a tour of the office complex and introduced a number of employees.  ISC's project managers, software developers, website designers, business analysts and geospatial analysts were all represented.

The group then sat down in the conference room while ISC principals Brian Hearn and Mark Alexander provided a briefing about ISC, its history and products and services.  Edwin Lott, another ISC principal, was noticeably absent from the meeting due to a minor injury he suffered Saturday while using a bench grinder to sharpen the hooks on a mackerel lure.

Mr. Alexander provided a short summary of a number of client projects ISC has completed recently, including several conducted for State of Florida government agencies.  Mr. Hearn then showcased ISC's MapDotNet geospatial software product line.

Lt. Governor Kottkamp was quite interested in ISC's geospatial visualization software and said "The marketing opportunities are really endless."

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration was recognized this week for the work they've done, in cooperation with ISC, in publishing healthcare transparency data on the web.  From Holly Benson of AHCA:

"This week we were recognized and honored with the National Association of Health Data Organizations’ 2009 Innovation in Data Dissemination Award. This award was created to recognize the importance of effectively communicating health data to the public, and Beth Eastman from our Florida Center for Health Information and Policy Analysis accepted the award on our behalf.

Our team was particularly recognized for their work in developing www.FloridaHealthFinder.gov.  Many of you have visited the Web site and know it has interactive tools that allow you to compare performance for hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, health plans, nursing homes and hospice organizations as well as pricing on prescription drugs. The site also has a health encyclopedia offering over 3,900 articles and 3,000 illustrations of important medical information, and a state-of-the-art symptom navigator using an animated anatomically correct body representation. FloridaHealthFinder.gov is the only Web site of its kind to connect a health encyclopedia and symptom navigator to information about a particular health care facility.

This year, we have worked to expand the information available on the Web site. We now share:

• health outcome and pricing information on over 150 conditions/procedures for hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers;
• hospice satisfaction measures from the Family Evaluation of Hospice Care Satisfaction Survey Tool;
• statistics on potentially preventable 15 day readmission rates for hospitals;
• an improved facility/provider locator and proximity search tool; and
• Florida Medicaid Expenditures by Provider Category table showing the total Medicaid expenditures for each major Medicaid service provider along with the number of recipients served."

Beth sent us a follow up note letting us know she appreciates our efforts which led to this award as well.  We really enjoy working with her and they deserve this award!

At ISC, we've been a Software as a Service provider for a number of years.  As a result, we have developed relationships with several large data centers where we either lease or co-locate equipment to run solutions we provide to our customers.

Recently, we took the next step by migrating our email system, Microsoft Exchange, to the cloud.  We're now using Microsoft Online. 

• The migration was almost transparent;  we all had to install a new Microsoft Online Sign In application and that was about it.
• Our Outlook based rules didn't migrate--but other than that, everything did.
• As a result of the migration, we upgraded from Exchange 2003, which we've been running for a long time, to Exchange 2007.
• We shut down our Exchange server in our office server room.
• Now we can use the full Outlook client no matter where we are as long as we have Internet access--not something we supported before.
• Our mailbox capacity is now increased quite a bit, up to 20 mb per mailbox.

Thanks to Greg Dodge of EC3, our business partner and cloud computing architect, for overseeing the migration and providing some assistance to our users.

ISC is seeking a new, permanent full time employee.  We are looking for a well qualified, capable and productive .NET developer.  The successful candidate will maintain several existing applications, but will also be instrumental in migrating at least one application to Windows Azure.  If you are interested, please email mark.alexander@goisc.com and send your resume!

• Dynamics CRM Online
• Windows Azure
• SQL Azure
• BPOS (includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, LiveMeeting and Communicator)

Check out one of our many new offerings that is gaining a lot of traction in the local government market here: http://heygov.com.