Content solution provider Mint Net tackles its largest development project ever, and prepares to ride a wave of projects as enterprises hurry to get their unstructured knowledge under control BEFORE STARTING Mint Net in early 2000, the founders studied the market and came to the following conclusion: few organisations delivered professional, functional and captivating websites. Some specialised only in design, while others delivered sites with great functionality, but little else aesthetically speaking.

"Our objective when we started Mint was to combine the two, which, at that time, was uncommon," says Grant Hodgkinson, who now heads up sales and marketing for the firm.

In five years, the company has made a name for itself in areas ranging from document and records management, to Web and enterprise content management, digital asset management and human workflow.

Mint delivers solutions across three Microsoft technology platforms, namely Content Management Server, Commerce Server and SharePoint Portal Server.

"We have deliberately kept our technology focus small so that we can continue to improve our skills and deliver increasing value to our customers. Our goal is to never be complacent about a technology implementation: there are always lessons to be learned and improvements to be made," he notes.

"We have also been fortunate to have a relationship with the Microsoft product team directly, and this has helped in providing them with some real-life experiences that we have had with their technologies, which they have been able to include in their planning cycles."

In 2003, the company delivered the first site in Africa using Content Management Server 2002. "Based on the successes of this project, we`ve gone on to become a global leader in the field of Web content management platforms using Microsoft," he claims.

Later in 2003, Microsoft SA`s intranet went live with a solution built by Mint using SharePoint Portal Server 2003, even before the product`s official release. And in early 2004, Mint went on to be appointed to Microsoft`s Partner Advisory Council.

Just last year, Mint embarked on its largest development project ever, and what it describes as one of the most ambitious SharePoint projects worldwide to date.

This involves a global implementation of Content Management Server, SharePoint Portal Server and K2.net for a large manufacturing company, resulting in about 20 SharePoint servers working together in the solution once completely deployed.

Other notable feats include its appointment in October by South African Tourism to improve its public site and trade extranet.

Soon, Hodgkinson expects it will be working on the implementation of the Mint eGovernment solution for the Rwandan parliament, and several other countries, following the success it had with the office of the President of Rwanda. It`s also looking at deploying a portal for a leading bank in West Africa, and another back home.

Other projects occupying its time include a knowledge management and document management solution for a local medical aid organisation; a Content Management Server implementation for a government department; the development of a process automation system for the Department of Justice; and a project and budget tracking system for a large SA bank.

"We are seeing huge momentum building in the management of unstructured knowledge within organisations. The largest efficiency gains that customers realise are in the elimination of the duplication of efforts, and the reduction in time it takes to search for information," emphasises Hodgkinson.

The industry is not without its challenges though, and he maintains that, internationally, programming as we know it is becoming commoditised, with technology platform vendors making development easier and simpler.

"But this is crossed with the challenge of security. The industry as a whole is going to have to dig even deeper in terms of addressing security-related concerns in the future."

SA is no different in these challenges, but it also has some unique challenges of its own, including empowerment in the workplace. "The majority of technology solutions affect people in their daily work lives, but assume PC literacy at their cores. This does place a need for training on all of us."